Why did Health Secretary Wes Streeting say Britain was going to be a fat-free country within a decade when it’s a promise he clearly can’t keep? He made this spurious claim this week at the launch of Labour’s 10-year NHS health plan claiming that drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro would help win the war against obesity.
No, they won’t – not unless the Government starts investing REAL time and money and rolling them out to the millions who needs them. For weeks now the NHS has been proudly trumpeting the fact that GPs can now prescribe fat jabs like Mounjaro making it sound like they’re taking obesity and what the drugs can do – seriously.
But it’s taking neither seriously. Despite the fact that more than 64% of people in the UK are either overweight or obese our NHS – which is currently buckling under the strain of obesity related illnesseses – is still tickling around the edges of the problem without doing anything meaningful to tackle it.
If it was even vaguely serious about the fat jabs AND helping obese people GPs would have been given the go ahead to give them to a damn sight more than the piddling 220,000, we’ve been told will get it over the next THREE years.
Just think about that. There are 38,000 GPs in Britain and between them – over THREE years – they can treat just 220,000 people.
How is that going to solve Britain’s rocketing obesity problem? Why not give it to a million people over three years? But even if that happened it still wouldn’t put even a dent in obesity statistics.
And incredibly obstacles are already being put in the way of people who ask their GP for the drug. Listening to the Government’s announcement about the rollout to GP’s you could be forgiven for thinking it was available to anyone who was overweight.
It isn’t. That’s a million miles away from the reality. Only minuscule numbers of patients will qualify for it, and they will have to have three of five specific health problems before they get it – a BMI of 40 or more,
Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and sleep apnoea. So, if you don’t have most of all of those – you don’t get the drug despite the fact you might still be dangerously obese.
None of which seems fair when we have millions of people who know there’s a drug out there that will solve a majority of their health problems – yet they’re being denied it.
And just to prove the NHS isn’t 100% on board with these jabs Prof Kamila Hawthorne, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, says that while the weight loss drugs “have a lot of potential (an understatement if ever there was one) we also need to focus on prevention, stopping people from becoming overweight.”
Well, how’s that been working out for you and the NHS Prof Hawthorne? With one in four adults overweight and one in five kids – I’d say catastrophically badly!!!!
The whole reason these drugs are now vital is precisely because doctors and our NHS have failed miserably in preventing people from getting fat.
And that failure hasn’t been helped by the fact that doctors and clinicians aren’t allowed to tell patients they’re obese in case in upsets them or they feel fat-shamed.
What the Hell is wrong with the people running our health service? It knows obesity costs more than £12B a year so why isn’t it falling over itself to use a drug that has been proved to slash it?
The fact is Mounjaro works and the NHS knows it. So why isn’t it throwing a much bigger slice of its £202BILLION budget at a problem that is its biggest financial burden and which is killing people before their time.
For years we’ve been praying for a wonder drug that will shift weight safely and quickly. Now we have one in Mounjaro, and our health service is messing around giving it to a pitiful few people not the millions who so desperately need it.
If the fat jabs were rolled out in a serious way the NHS could make a huge dent in the obesity statistics within a year never mind ten years.
But no, it’s moving at a snail’s pace and in the meantime obese people are having strokes, heart attacks, getting diabetes and suffering from obesity related cancers. And all because the Government isn’t throwing enough money at the problem.
Well, it needs to because how much is obesity costing right now? It’s a damn sight more than a few million doses of Mounjaro would that’s for sure.
Currently 1.5M people in the UK are paying privately for the drug through reputable online companies. That’s what I did with a company called Juniper and with its help, guidance and monitored weight loss programme I managed to lose nearly four stones in nine months.
Of course, I get the fact that not everyone can afford the £200-odd a month Mounjaro costs but why doesn’t the NHS think about helping to subsidise that. Why not help people to pay privately (then it’s not as big as burden on the NHS) with a kind of subsidy.
The Government pays some money, the overweight person pays the rest. That way people will still be buying from reputable companies like Juniper and others but they’ll be checked and monitored all the way through their weight loss journey in a way that GPs just don’t have time for.
THAT would also ease the burden on GPs who are already complaining that having to deal with Mounjaro will increase their workload – although I’m not sure how. If GPs properly got on board with this drug – and many still aren’t – it would hugely reduce strokes, heart problems, cancer-related problems and blood pressure problems.
On the one hand we have a rocketing obesity crisis in this country which is putting a massive burden on the NHS and on the other we have a drug that is making massive inroads into the problem. Which is why the NHS needs to get serious about using it. Because the cost of doing nothing is too great!