Drugs bill soars in the battle of ever-expanding bulge
October 10, 2004
By Murdo Macleod
The number of patients prescribed anti-obesity drugs has quadrupled in the past three years as doctors battle with the nation’s ever-expanding waistlines.
New figures from the Scottish Executive show that more
than £3m was spent on drugs aimed at helping the
public lose
weight and that 50 Scots a year are having to go
under the surgeon’s knife for anti-obesity surgery.
The shocking figures are the latest indicator that Scotland is in the grip of an obesity crisis. In June, Scotland on Sunday revealed that the number of ‘superfat’ Scots who die as a direct result of obesity has doubled in the past three years, with some victims suffocating as a result of their excess weight. Studies suggest that as many as 850,000 Scots are classified as being clinically obese.
And last week figures published by Diabetes UK indicated that by 2010 one in 10 Britons is likely to suffer from diabetes because of obesity, with the disease affecting an increasingly younger section of the population.
The latest figures have been published by NHS Scotland as part of their annual report into the costs of prescribing drugs to Scottish patients.
They show that in 2003-04, there were 75,381 prescriptions of anti-obesity drugs, compared with just 17,820 in 2000-01. Three years ago, the anti-obesity drugs cost the NHS in Scotland £765,732 a year, whereas the budget for 2003-04 was £3,363,457. The rise represents more than a four-fold increase in both the number of prescriptions and their cost to the NHS in Scotland. The cost increase is due to more drugs now being available.
At the same time, the number of Scots having surgery in order to tackle obesity has risen from 30 in 1999-2000 to 50 in 2002-03, an increase of 66%. Options for surgery include stapling parts of the stomach and even using plastic surgery to create inner partitions in the stomach to ‘fool’ the patient’s body into thinking they are fuller than they really are.
Dr Deborah Wake, an expert in the study of obesity at Edinburgh University, said: "These figures show that both the general population and the medical profession are more aware of obesity as a major health issue which has to be tackled.
"We definitely have an obesity crisis - we are about 10 years behind the United States, and we see the major problems they have. The changes in lifestyle and health are so massive that we need to look at other ways of dealing with this, such as medication."
Catherine Hankey, a specialist in obesity and dietary management at Glasgow University, said: "These figures are very significant because they show that doctors are increasingly willing to treat obesity as a disease, which is what it has been in the Western world ever since the end of the Second World War.
"The cost of the prescriptions is well worth it. Studies have shown that the cost of treating obesity is considerable, getting on for £200m, because of heart disease, diabetes and so forth, and only a tiny percentage is being spent on prescriptions aimed at getting people’s weight down.
"Some of the drugs which are available are very effective, and in my view they are needed. For many people, being overweight or obese is linked to mental factors such as depression, so it is not good enough simply to tell people to ‘pull themselves together’ and sort out their diet and get active. Many people need some kind of support too."
Laura Brown, from Glasgow, was 23 stone and depressed about her weight when she was prescribed Xenical, the most popular anti-obesity drug, in 2000. She was one of the first Scots to be prescribed the drug, which is made by the global pharmaceutical firm Roche, and which helped her lose 11 stone over the next two years.
She said: "I was 27 but looked 40 and felt extremely unattractive, unhealthy and suicidally depressed. I had tried all kinds of things. I had tried the diets, I had tried the gym, and nothing seemed to work. The prescription worked for me because I really wanted to lose weight. I also went to the gym and worked out and I made sure I was careful with what I ate. The drug helped me not to overeat, but going to the gym and keeping the portions down was still very hard. The Xenical prescription also included a helpline which I could contact to get advice about diet and anything really, and they helped keep my motivation going."
Xenical, which has the generic name Orlistat, works by stopping up to one-third of the fat in a person’s diet being absorbed from the gut. Without a strictly controlled low-fat diet, the side-effects - flatulence and diarrhoea - are intolerable to most people.
Brown added: "You learnt pretty quickly not to overeat, because it all comes out the other end very quickly. It really worked. One of the biggest pains was any time I was out with friends in a restaurant. I felt very self-conscious when I was ordering food because I would ask the waiter what was in it, how much fat and all that. I could see my friends rolling their eyes."
A Scottish Executive spokeswoman said: "Prescription drugs can play a vital role in treating a wide range of conditions and improving the quality of life for patients across the country. Prescription drugs for obesity can be used as part of a treatment programme that can also include professional tailored advice and support for aspects of diet and physical activity if these are thought necessary.
"Scotland is not alone in experiencing a rapid rise in obesity. It has been on the increase in virtually all developed countries over the past two decades. We cannot and are not sitting back and doing nothing to stop this health time bomb."
Source:http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com
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