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UN Summer Camps Let Kids 'Just Be Kids' in Gaza

Palestinian refugee students attend an activity as part of "Fun Weeks" summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in a school in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, July 11, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Palestinian refugee students attend an activity as part of "Fun Weeks" summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in a school in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, July 11, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
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UN Summer Camps Let Kids 'Just Be Kids' in Gaza

Palestinian refugee students attend an activity as part of "Fun Weeks" summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in a school in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, July 11, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Palestinian refugee students attend an activity as part of "Fun Weeks" summer camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in a school in Beach refugee camp in Gaza City, July 11, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

More than 130,000 Palestinian boys and girls in Gaza have joined summer camps run by the United Nations to give them a break from the stresses of living in a strip of land that is under an economic blockade and often embroiled in conflict with Israel.
The Palestine children, including those with disabilities, will over four weeks participate in a series of activities including greening, recycling, sports, drawing, handicrafts, and language learning, the agency said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said a recent agency study found that 38% of children in Gaza showed symptoms of functional impairment affecting their daily lives, Reuters said.
UNRWA runs 284 schools in Gaza, serving at least 290,000 students.
"The most important thing is 130,000 children get the opportunity just to be kids despite the economic situation, despite the ongoing conflict, they can come to summer weeks of UNRWA and just be children," said Thomas White, the Director of UNRWA Affairs in Gaza.
Palestinians have lived through several wars with Israel since 2008, including five days of fighting in May, which have made healing almost impossible as the causes remain unchanged, say local and international experts.
They put the number of children needing mental health help at nearly a quarter of the enclave's 2.3 million population that lives under a crippling blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt, which both control and restrict the Gaza Strip's borders.
"I came here to entertain myself away from the things I had been subject to such as wars and conflicts that I witnessed. I may not be like other children (of the world) but I am trying to stay positive no matter what happens," 13-year-old Joanna El-Halabi told Reuters at one school in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
The activity creates around 3,000 short-term jobs for Gaza youth, UNRWA said.
Established in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, the agency provides public services including schools, primary healthcare, and humanitarian aid in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

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Obesity Won’t Be Solely Defined by BMI under New Plan for Diagnosis by Global Experts

A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
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Obesity Won’t Be Solely Defined by BMI under New Plan for Diagnosis by Global Experts

A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)
A man uses measuring tape on his waist in California on Jan. 9, 2025. (AP)

A group of global experts is proposing a new way to define and diagnose obesity, reducing the emphasis on the controversial body mass index and hoping to better identify people who need treatment for the disease caused by excess body fat.

Under recommendations released Tuesday night, obesity would no longer be defined solely by BMI, a calculation of height and weight, but combined with other measurements, such as waist circumference, plus evidence of health problems tied to extra pounds.

Obesity is estimated to affect more than 1 billion people worldwide. In the US, about 40% of adults have obesity, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The whole goal of this is to get a more precise definition so that we are targeting the people who actually need the help most," said Dr. David Cummings, an obesity expert at the University of Washington and one of the 58 authors of the report published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

The report introduces two new diagnostic categories: clinical obesity and pre-clinical obesity.

People with clinical obesity meet BMI and other markers of obesity and have evidence of organ, tissue or other problems caused by excess weight. That could include heart disease, high blood pressure, liver or kidney disease or chronic severe knee or hip pain. These people would be eligible for treatments, including diet and exercise interventions and obesity medications.

People with pre-clinical obesity are at risk for those conditions, but have no ongoing illness, the report says.

BMI has long been considered a flawed measure that can over-diagnose or underdiagnose obesity, which is currently defined as a BMI of 30 or more. But people with excess body fat do not always have a BMI above 30, the report notes. And people with high muscle mass — football players or other athletes — may have a high BMI despite normal fat mass.

Under the new criteria, about 20% of people who used to be classified as obese would no longer meet the definition, preliminary analysis suggests. And about 20% of people with serious health effects but lower BMI would now be considered clinically obese, experts said.

"It wouldn't dramatically change the percentage of people being defined as having obesity, but it would better diagnose the people who really have clinically significant excess fat," Cummings said.

The new definitions have been endorsed by more than 75 medical organizations around the world, but it's not clear how widely or quickly they could be adopted in practice. The report acknowledges that implementation of the recommendations "will carry significant costs and workforce implications."

A spokesman for the health insurance trade group AHIP, formerly known as America's Health Insurance Plans, said "it's too early at this point to gauge how plans will incorporate these criteria into coverage or other policies."

There are practical issues to consider, said Dr. Katherine Saunders, an obesity expert at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of the obesity treatment company FlyteHealth. Measuring waist circumference sounds simple, but protocols differ, many doctors aren't trained accurately and standard medical tape measures aren't big enough for many people with obesity.

In addition, determining the difference between clinical and pre-clinical obesity would require a comprehensive health assessment and lab tests, she noted.

"For a new classification system to be widely adopted, it would also need to be extremely quick, inexpensive, and reliable," she said.

The new definitions are likely to be confusing, said Kate Bauer, a nutrition expert at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

"The public likes and needs simple messages. I don't think this differentiation is going to change anything," she said.

Overhauling the definition of obesity will take time, acknowledged Dr. Robert Kushner, an obesity expert at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and a co-author of the report.

"This is the first step in the process," he said. "I think it's going to begin the conversation."