Chairman of the National Parent Teachers Association, Raffina Ali Boodoosingh

At least 50 per cent of Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary school chil­dren are overweight and are at risk of be­com­ing di­a­bet­ics.

The Joint Select Committee on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Administration met yesterday to ex­am­ine the cur­rent lev­els of child­hood obe­si­ty and what the State was do­ing to pro­mote a health­i­er lifestyle among chil­dren.

Chairman of the National Parent Teachers Association, Raffina Ali Boodoosingh said the largest number of cases can be found in the east.

Pres­i­dent of Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion An­drew Dhanoo said his or­gan­i­sa­tion has seen a shift of younger peo­ple be­ing di­ag­nosed with di­a­betes.

He said one in­di­ca­tor of pre-di­a­betes is the dark­en­ing of the skin be­hind the neck.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion sug­gest­ed sig­nif­i­cant changes in schools to pro­mote healthy en­vi­ron­ment be adopt­ed at the soon­est.

Among ini­tia­tives to fight the problem, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Health im­ple­ment­ed in 2017 was the re­stric­tion of sug­ary drinks be­ing sold in schools.

The schools al­so rolled out 4-H clubs to en­cour­age phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty among chil­dren.