PRINCE Charles has called for a pandemic-style response to stop kids getting fat – and wants doctors to prescribe “good quality food”.
He praised the way healthcare workers reacted to Covid in an article, saying it should be applied to tackling chronic health issues.
Read our coronavirus live blog for the latest news & updates…
The Prince of Wales wrote in Future Healthcare Journal: “When we hear that a quarter of 14-16-year-old girls are self-harming and almost a third of our children are overweight or obese, it should make us realise that we will have to be a bit more radical in addressing these problems.
“As medicine starts to grapple with these wider determinants of health, I also believe that medicine will need to combine bioscience with personal beliefs, hopes, aspirations and choices.
“Doctors have a crucial role in affirming the importance of good quality food just as they do good quality medicines.”
His Royal Highness said a “systems approach” should be carried out in all health-related areas.
Combining science, policy and personal behaviour and bringing communities together could be the way to tackle persistent health problems blighting the country, he said.
Prince Charles said: “I believe it is more important than ever that we should aim for this middle ground.
“Only then can we escape divisions and intolerance on both sides of the conventional/complementary equation, where on the one hand, the appropriate regulation of the proven therapies of acupuncture and medical herbalism is opposed, while on the other we find people actually opposing life-saving vaccinations.
“Who would have thought, for instance, that in the 21st century there would be a significant lobby opposing vaccination, given its track record in eradicating so many terrible diseases and its current potential to protect and liberate some of the most vulnerable in our society from coronavirus?”
VACCINE FANS
In mid-February, it was announced Charles and Camilla had received their first Covid vaccinations.
The heir to the throne, who is aged 72, and the duchess, 73, were – as over 70-year-olds – in the fourth priority group for the rollout of the jabs.
The Duchess of Cornwall revealed today she was given the AstraZeneca Covid jab and praised the vaccine rollout effort, telling a doctor: “You need to get people in.”
Camilla said it “didn’t matter” which vaccine she was given – and joked she did not ask because “I hate injections so much” during a visit to a pop-up inoculation centre in London with the Prince of Wales.
A string of European countries – including Germany, France, Italy and Spain – have paused the use of the AstraZeneca jab in their vaccine rollouts due to concerns over possible adverse side effects.
Less than 40 cases of blood clots have been reported to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) by March 10.
