Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for the presentation and I thank the participants for appearing before the committee. I recently spoke to somebody who made a presentation at a meeting of general practitioners, GPs, and practice nurses. The presentation was not about obesity but the person decided to touch on it because of the problems the person was having in their hospital clinics. The person was very surprised when the GPs said that they would not raise the issue of being overweight with their patients unless the patient raised it with them. The person was very concerned. This links in with what Dr. Orsmond said about prescription medication. Perhaps we need to start with educating GPs on dealing with this issue and using a diplomatic approach with patients.

In addition, the person was recently running a maternity clinic in their hospital.

They had four patients, with BMI measurements of 41, 43 and 45. To put the icing on the cake, if members will excuse the pun, the fourth patient was smoking 50 cigarettes a day. It goes to show that we are not progressing education. The witnesses have done more in a short period of time than what was done in the previous ten years, and I congratulate them on that. Deputy Ó Caoláin mentioned that we all have a part to play. The medical profession has a part to play and I am not sure it has been involved sufficiently. We must approach that matter.