On the International World Health Day, Marlene Mizzi reiterated her concerns over the gravity of the problem of childhood obesity in Europe, which is also a critical health issue for Malta. The Labour MEP reaction comes in light of the reply of the European Health and Food safety Commissioner, Vytenis Andriukaitis, to two of her parliamentary questions on European practices in tackling childhood obesity among Member States.

Marlene Mizzi had asked the Commission to throw fresh light on the different practices among Member States to tackle childhood obesity and on the implementation stage of the Member State-led Action Plan on Childhood Obesity (2014-2020). “Obesity is definitely not a unique problem for Malta and sadly the number of people suffering from this condition is alarmingly high across Europe’’ commented MEP Mizzi. Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980, with more than 600 million adults and 42 million children under the age of 5 being obese or overweight. MEP Mizzi said that regretfully Maltese children are among the most overweight not only in Europe, but also worldwide and therefore extra efforts are needed to prevent this phenomenon from further escalating.

 

In his reply, Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, said that under the strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity-related Health Issues, the Commission coordinates an action-oriented partnership involving all the 28 EU Member States. Its aim is to share best practices and discuss solutions for addressing challenges such as childhood obesity. In February 2014, the High Level Group agreed on a voluntary Action Plan to reduce Childhood Obesity. The monitoring system being put in place with the collaboration of the WHO will generate evidence on the implementation of good practice.

In addition, the European Health Programmes have also co-financed projects which tackled nutrition and physical activity in general and. The Commission continues to provide support to the Member States in preventing childhood obesity through a Joint Action, scheduled to start in mid-2015, as foreseen in the Commission work programme 2014 of the Health Programme adopted in May of the same year.

Reacting to this reply, Marlene Mizzi said “Not only is obesity snowballing in Europe, but like some other European countries, Malta is facing a crisis that will affect children's health and wellbeing, as well as the country's health spending and budgets to react to the long-term complications of obesity, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and mental health problems, among others. Childhood obesity is a complex problem that concerns not only individual Member States, but Europe as a whole. Unfortunately at this stage there have been no comprehensive measures at European level to fight this health problem. Obesity is and will remain one of the most important public health issues in the years to come, thus requiring urgent European actions to address the problem of obesity systematically across all Member States and across all policies concerned ”