Obesity could bankrupt the NHS

The BBC reports that the rising incidence of obesity in the UK threatens to cripple the NHS with increased cases of obesity related illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease and stroke.

“Experts, including government A&E tsar George Alberti and Glasgow University professor Naveed Sattar, said obesity treatment took up 9% of the NHS budget.”

With the rates of obesity set to increase further, unless the current trend can be abated, the NHS could be in serious trouble in the forthcoming decades. The only consolation is that the new laws on smoking that are due to come in next summer (2007) should alleviate the number of cases of smoking related illness, which is also a great drain on NHS resources.

Professor Sattar, an expert in metabolic medicine, said that the general public “clearly have some responsibility for their health”.

It is up to us to take action to look after our own health, the health of our loved ones and those in our community. The forthcoming New Year is a good time to make resolutions to improve our diets and increase the amount of exercise we take.

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Tags: health insurance, nhs, obesity

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 5:53 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.