MANILA, Philippines--Procter & Gamble Philippines has suspended ad placement on "Willing Willie" amid a child abuse controversy hounding the top-rating television show's host, the company announced Thursday.
Children who are over-active, cannot concentrate or act impulsively as early as age three tend to become troubled adults unless they learn self-control along the way, said a study on Monday.
An international team of researchers examined young children in New Zealand and Britain and found that the low-scorers on measures of self-control as kids faced more financial, health and substance abuse problems as they aged.
Measures of low self-control in the study of 1,000 New Zealand children included "low frustration tolerance, lacks persistence in reaching goals, difficulty sticking with a task," said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Other indicators were "over-active, acts before thinking, has difficulty waiting turn, restless, not conscientious."
The children who scored lowest on those counts faced a host of problems as adults, "things like breathing problems, gum disease, sexually transmitted disease, inflammation, overweight, and high cholesterol and blood pressure," the study said.
Researchers also saw those children emerge as adults with financial woes, such as credit card debt.
"They also were more likely to be single parents, have a criminal conviction record, and be dependent on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and harder drugs," said the study.
"These adult outcomes were predictable across the entire spectrum of self-control scores, from low to high," said Duke University psychologist Terrie Moffitt, lead researcher on the study.
The same researchers also looked at a study of 500 pairs of fraternal twins and Britain and tracked the differences between the lower self-control twin and the higher self-control twin as they aged.
"The sibling with lower self-control scores at age five was more likely than their sibling to begin smoking, perform poorly in school and engage in antisocial behaviours at age 12," the study said.
Co-author Avshalom Caspi of Duke University said the findings suggest that an individual's ability to exert self-control has an influence of its own and is independent from the environment in which one is raised.
"This shows that self-control is important by itself, apart from all other factors that siblings share, such as their parents and home life," said Caspi.
The researchers said they found evidence that children who changed their ways and learn to exert more self-control fared better in adulthood than their counterparts, indicating that behaviour changes can show positive results.
"The good news is that self-control can change. People can change," said Alexis Piquero, a professor of criminology at Florida State University who was not a part of the study.
Cure International's first hospital in Asia, which will offer free orthopedic surgical services for poor and disabled children, will soon rise here.
It will be the 12th such facility of the Philadelphia-based group in the world. Cure, founded by philanthropists Dr. Scott and Sally Harrison 10 years ago, operates hospitals for poor children in several countries.
Sonia Reyes, authorized representative and consultant of Cure International Philippines, told reporters here Wednesday that Cure International will initially spend $2.5 million for the construction of a four-story hospital on a 700-square-meter property in Lanang, Davao City.
The construction of the 30-bed “high-quality medical facility” will start in June and it is expected to be operational two years later, she said.
“It’s really a blessing for Mindanao and Davao City because it was chosen in the whole of Asia by Cure International to build its 12th children’s hospital in Third-World countries,” Reyes said.
The construction of the Cure facility here was made possible through the lobbying of Sacred Heart Foundation, which pledged $1.9 million for the project. Sacred Heart Foundation attends to the needs of poor children and families in Mindanao.
“They expressed an interest in possibly funding a significant part of the cost of a Cure hospital for Mindanao,” Reyes said.
She said the hospital will offer free medical assistance including major surgical services, to indigent children from Mindanao with orthopedic problems. These include medical services for those suffering from congenital limb anomalies, post-trauma fracture and burn, clubfoot, bone infection and other orthopedic-related care.
She said adult orthopedic patients will also be admitted at the hospital but they have to pay for the services rendered to them.
Reyes said another benefit the hospital could bring to Mindanao is employment as the facility will initially require qualified applicants from Davao City and elsewhere in Mindanao.
Reyes said Cure has forged agreements with local government units in Mindanao in relation to its operation.
The local government units will handle the monitoring and screening of indigent children in terms of their economic status, residences and other needed data to avail of the hospital’s free medical services, she said.
Since its first hospital was opened in Kenya in 1998, Cure has seen over one million patients and performed over 78,000 life-changing and life-saving surgeries on disabled children, Reyes said.
There are currently 11 Cure hospitals operating in 10 countries including one in Nigeria.
