The NHS is in crisis and fat kids are to blame, a leading doctor warned, adding that the “grotesque” modern diet is placing needless pressure on the nation’s health service.
One-time professor of surgery at Guy’s Hospital London, Lord McColl of Dulwich, told the House of Lords that young people and their bad eating habits had more to answer for than the elderly when it came to a strained NHS.
His speech followed the shocking revelation that, on average, Accident & Emergency patients in England waited up to four hours for treatment over the last month – the service’s worst figures in more than a decade – while patients had to wait more than two months to begin cancer treatment after receiving an urgent referral.
Health officials, who have dubbed the situation “unprecedented,” believe the services are suffering under the burden of a growing number of senior citizens, noting that there are over one million more people over age 65 living in Britain now than in 2010.
However, Lord McColl refused to accept that old people were to blame.
“It’s not so much the old people getting older – because old people have always been getting older,” he said in the Lords.
“The difference in the last 30 years is the grotesque increase in young people getting fatter and fatter,” he suggested, adding that the growing number of obese children was “killing millions, costing billions and the cure is free – just eat fewer calories.”
One in three British children aged 10 to 11 is currently classed as overweight or obese, while the NHS spends some £10 billion on type 2 diabetes treatments every year.