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Author: By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Sir Liam Donaldson called for a national programme of fitness testing to be
piloted in secondary schools to help reverse the trend to slothfulness.
Children of normal weight who are unfit face greater health risks than those
who are fat but fit, he said.
Presenting his final annual report after 12 years in what has been called the
toughest job in medicine, Sir Liam listed the 38 reports he has published ?
a work rate that far exceeded his predecessors? ? and said he was proudest
of helping to bring about the smoking ban, the first legislation in the
world to allow embryo research and a switch of focus in the NHS from
quantity to the quality and safety of care.
His biggest regret was the Government?s failure to implement his
recommendation for a minimum price on alcohol, rejected by Gordon Brown a
year ago, which could have started ?to turn the tide on binge-drinking?.
On exercise, his final recommendation for boosting the health of the nation,
he described it as ?nature?s cure? and said that if its benefits were
available in pill form it would be hailed as a miracle treatment.
?Inactivity pervades the country. It affects more people in England than the
combined total of those who smoke, misuse alcohol or are obese. Being
physically active is crucial to good health,? he said.
Around 70 per cent of adults fail to meet the minimum recommended level of 30
minutes of physical activity five times a week, increasing their risk of six
chronic diseases: heart disease, stroke, diabetes, breast cancer, colon
cancer and osteoporosis.
Fitness decreases during childhood, possibly due to decreasing emphasis on
physical fitness in older age groups, the report says. In California, which
has had mandatory fitness testing for 10- to 15-year-olds since 2003, there
was a better than 8 per cent improvement in the number of children rated fit
over three years.
Sir Liam also called for a national cold weather plan to be developed, similar
to the national heatwave plan, to reduce the number of excess winter deaths
among the elderly. More than 30,000 extra people die on average between
December and March, compared with other times of the year.
Britain?s rate is 45 per cent higher than in Finland, despite being much less
cold, and is higher than many neighbouring countries, including Germany, the
Netherlands, France and Italy.
?The coldest countries are very well prepared ? they understand the need to
keep their homes insulated and to wear more clothes when they go out better
than in those countries where people are used to living in T-shirts,? he
said.
Sir Liam said he expected a high toll in Britain this year because of the
unusually cold weather, which causes the blood to thicken and the arteries
to constrict, resulting in more heart attacks and strokes.
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