Schools need special nurses to curb obesity

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Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, is calling for teams of specialist nurses to screen children at risk of weight-related health problems such as diabetes and heart disease.

He said: "Everyone knows what the impact of obesity is but you need people out there working it through. If every child underwent routine screening it would alert parents that 'You have a problem here.'"

Nearly one in four children starting primary school is either overweight or obese. Measures brought in by the Government have included weighing and measuring every child on their arrival at school, then again at the age of 11.

But Dr Carter said this did not go far enough to identify children at risk of obesity.

Speaking ahead of the RCN's annual conference, he said that children should be properly weight-assessed at least once a year by the modern equivalent of "nit nurses" dedicated to working with young people at risk.

Annual checks are already carried out in the US, where rates of obesity are slowly starting to fall.