Four out of every 10 children are overweight or obese, the first study to measure the whole school-age population has found.
The study, whose findings will be published in the Journal of Paediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition next month, shows that, overall, there were most overweight and obese children in State schools, followed by Church and independent schools, respectively.
The findings confirm what other studies that compared various countries had already established: Malta has a high number of overweight and obese children. For the researchers, this is of major concern, because obesity follows into adulthood and is known to lead to morbidity and mortality.
Moreover, contrary to studies done in other countries, the new findings show that the proportion of obese children exceeds those who are overweight.
The proportion of obese children exceeds those who are overweight
This higher proportionality of obese children indicated that the Maltese weight problem was getting worse over time and this called for urgent action, Samuel Aquilina said.
The study was led by Victor Grech and Dr Aquilina, from the Paediatric Department at Mater Dei Hospital, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Employment’s Research and Policy Development Directorate, the Ministry of Health and the Malta Association of Physiotherapists.
Obesity is a chronic disease that often commences in childhood. The data shows that more than a quarter of Maltese children are overweight or obese. This study was carried out to measure the height and weight (and body mass index) of all schoolchildren and quantify the extent of the problem.
The exercise is scalable and can be theoretically replicated in large countries using the same modus operandi. To the researchers’ knowledge, Malta is the first country to measure the entirety of school-aged children, as opposed to using a sampling strategy.
The study looked at 46,027 children in 145 schools. Their ages ranged from 4.7 to 17 years, but 4,280 were not measured due to absence, refusal to be measured or an ailment that excluded them from the study. Overall – for both sexes and for the various school types – excess weight and obesity peaked between years five and eight and then declined. Despite these trends, secondary schools showed a higher proportion of excess weight and obesity when compared to the primary level.
A higher proportion of boys was overweight or obese when compared to girls, something the study could not explain but which was noted in several other countries studied.
If active measures were undertaken to curb the problem of excess childhood weight and obesity, a repetition of the study would enable the detection of even small improvements in the prevailing situation, according to the researchers.