Obesity in children and other health worries has prompted a mother to develop her own website dedicated to children's health issues. USHMA MISTRY reports.

NUTRITIONIST and mother Nina Thakrar decided to set up healthykids.co.uk to help parents maintain and improve their children's health.

Mrs Thakrar, who is the co-owner of Stockwell Pharmacy in Uxbridge Road, Ealing with her husband Upesh, launched the site last week and says: "We have a lot of parents who come in to our chemist who are concerned about their children's health and diet.

"There wasn't a site that gave the right proportion of information that parents needed so I came up with the idea of our website."

The healthy kids website is quite unique in that parents can log on and put their questions about their child's health and well-being directly to a pharmacist, nutritionist or homeopathic expert who will give the best advice. Parents can also look up any conditions their children may have and choose from a range of alternative and conventional medicines to help treat it.

This on-line consultation service is being offered for free.

As well as the consultation service, the website also has a huge range of articles and information on a number of different subjects and issues related to a child's health. Mrs Thakrar adds: "The website has information on diets, supplements, herbs, homeopathic medicine and conventional medicines as well as current news.

"Children's health is a big issue and a lot of parents don't know how to make changes in their child's diet or know what is available."

Health visitors, paediatricians and dieticians were invited to the launch of healthykids.co.uk and offered their support to the site.

Every week an expert in their field will publish a different article on the website which parents can access for free.

Mrs Thakrar, has written many articles on nutrition and homeopathic medicine for a whole range of magazines and newspapers and believes the website will be very popular.

She explains: "Ingredients on food packaging can be very confusing and there is a lot parents don't know about their child's health which is available on the website."

Healthykids.co.uk is a non-commercial site and has already had great feedback. It has been up and running for three months and the response has been encouraging.

Mrs Thakrar says: "We weren't sure how well it would do so we decided to let it run on its own to see what kind of response we would get and so far it has been fantastic."

The healthy kids scheme is also launching a separate schools programme starting in September when they will be visiting local schools and talking to invited parents about all aspects of children's health.

For more information visit www.healthykids.co.uk or if you would like the team to do a talk at one of your school events call 020 8567 0678