Doctors 'ignore' early obesity

The Advertiser: Doctors 'ignore' early obesity :

"The guidelines recommend doctors measure the height and weight of all children aged two to 18 twice a year, to calculate their body mass index and compare it to other children at the same stage of development using charts.

But the study found only 44 per cent of GPs regularly weighed children and only 38 per cent regularly measured children, said Bibi Gerner, from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute's Centre for Community Child Health."

I can see how it's a good idea to weigh children between the ages of 2 and 18, but seriously, past the age of about 9/10 how are you going to weigh children at a sugery when they have come with their parents to consult about an ailment? It ties into all the privacy/sensitivity/political correctness not to mention trust, loyalty and confidence on the other side of the coin. It puts doctors in an invidious position because trying to weigh teenagers might be fraught with emotional sensitivity in our cultural atmosphere and risk losing teenagers from the medical system. Routine weighing can occur with littlies but it is not so easy with older children and I fully appreciate doctors being unable to do this as easily as we think they ought to be able to. Maybe it needs to be done elsewhere? Or scales provided in surgeries where there is a print out? Overweight people don't want others to know their weight and for lots of kids it would be traumatic under our current conditions. We need a rethink on this one.