Health bosses in Colchester today warned that in the future parents may outlive their obese children.
The warning came from Essex Rivers NHS Trust as Essex University announced it will run "fat camps" for overweight children this summer.
A spokesman for the Trust, which runs Colchester General Hospital, said: "We in Colchester are seeing increasing numbers of children who are obese, and they range from pre-school children right up to those in their teens.
"We tend to find obese children go on to develop diabetes in their late teens and generally they are storing up problems for later on in life.
"In the future parents could well end up outliving their children."
The Essex University course will only be offered to overweight children aged between 11 and 14 living in the Colchester area.
Interested parents can contact Mr Cudmore on 01206 873254 or e-mail him at tcudmo@essex.ac.uk
Published Wednesday April 7, 2004
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