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Pharmacy Links

CHILDREN AND ANGINA

02nd April 2009

Why should children feature in this book? They are at the other end of life, after all, from the years of angina. Yet, shockingly, they are already on the way towards it. Many experts in heart disease are fearful for the future of this generation of schoolchildren.

Think of the changes in society that are pushing children towards heart disease. They no longer walk to school, because of parents’ fears of letting their children walk alone in the dangerous streets. Due to financial cutbacks physical education classes and after-school sports programs are suffering.Im some schools, physical education classes amount to less than two thirty-minute periods a week, and often these seem less vigorous than a generation ago. At the last school P.E. period I witnessed, half the children had clipboards monitoring the other half’s exercise! Tj-, the Thatcher years in Britain, thousands of acres of school playing fields were sold off to provide short-term profits for the Treasury. What a shortsighted policy!

One of those changes would be worrying in itself, but all of them together make a nightmare that will arrive in the early years of the next century Heart disease rates have been falling in many countries as pecipjg have accepted the health message. Does the next generation have to learn again the hard way? If you have children in your home, whose lifestyles you recognize from the last few paragraphs, please take some time to discuss these things with them. Most do listen, even if they may not at first.