According to experts the increasing number of children with obesity related diabetes need radical help from the NHS in order to prevent serious damage to their health. Diabetes can be controlled with weight loss but many children are unable to sustain the strict diet and exercise routine that the disease calls for.

A recent study by Professor Julian Shield consultant paediatrician at the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children and lead author of the paper in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, of 73 adolescents with type 2 diabetes found that children tended to put on weight over the year instead of losing it and complications had already begun to set in the case of some children.

He said more radical measures were called for in order to help the children control their weight issues which could help cure the disease. "We are just treating the side-effects. To lose really large amounts of weight, which you have to do to give yourself a chance to resolve diabetes, is difficult. Adolescents do struggle. Some of them manage to lose 35 or 40 kilos. But others find it very, very difficult."

Shield suggests stomach restricting surgery as an option. Gastric banding is a technique that involves an inflatable ring being fitted on top of the stomach to make it smaller. This procedure results in patients being able to eat only small quantities of food and costs the NHS about £2,500.

The procedure has been available on the NHS for obese children under 18 since 2006 but is used in very rare cases. This surgery has a fatality risk of less than 1 % although up to 10 % of the patients can suffer complications.

According to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, this method should only be a "last resort" for children following lifestyle changes, but Shield said it could be considered "in severe cases".

He said that the procedure has been done in small numbers of cases elsewhere in the world, 90% of patients lost so much weight they were no longer diabetic after a year. Professor Shield said, "We have reached the point where it is necessary because of the significant threat of mortality and the morbidity of this disease. There needs to be a formal scientific trial of this method in adolescents.

"The children we see with type 2 diabetes who really struggle to lose weight with other methods have all the health issues that adult diabetics have. They are suffering high blood sugars, they are hypertensive and they have high blood fats. Their health is seriously at risk."

Type 2 diabetes is a condition that is linked to obesity and out of the 900,000 or 17% of British children, who are classified as obese, 1,400 of them suffer from type 2 diabetes and 100 new cases come up every year. Shield said, "In the UK, paediatric diabetes clinics are almost exclusively geared towards the treatment of type 1 diabetes and while dietetic support is almost universal, the emphasis is on healthy eating and insulin adjustment rather than weight loss and increased physical activity."

The researchers concluded, "Given the rising tide of type 2 diabetes in children, the figures indicate an urgent need to develop specific strategies to deal with this relatively new patient group, with culturally sensitive lifestyle and behaviour changes as the cornerstone of therapy."