Unemployed could be given weight-loss jabs to get back to work, says Wes Streeting

New weight-loss jabs could be given to unemployed people to help them get back into work, Wes Streeting has suggested.

The health secretary said “widening waistbands” were placing a burden on the NHS.

The latest generation of weight-loss medicine, such as Ozempic or Zepbound, could be administered to people in order to get them back into employment, and to ease costs to the health service, he added.

The plans announced at the summit will include real-world trials of weight-loss jabs’ impact on worklessness, according to the Telegraph.

The health secretary wrote: “Our widening waistbands are also placing significant burden on our health service, costing the NHS £11bn a year – even more than smoking. And it’s holding back our economy.

“Illness caused by obesity causes people to take an extra four sick days a year on average, while many others are forced out of work altogether.”

Dr Dolly van Tulleken, who specialises in obesity policy and is a visiting researcher at the MRC epidemiology unit at the University of Cambridge, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there were “some serious ethical, financial and efficacy considerations with such an approach … Such as looking at people, or measuring people based on their potential economic value, rather than primarily based on their needs and their health needs.”

She went on: “It’s incredibly important that people in the UK access healthcare based on their health need rather than their potential economic value.”

But despite scepticism, Van Tulleken said Streeting was on “the side of the population”, adding: “We know from across so much research … how popular these interventions are. People want the government to act. They want to live in a healthy environment; he is absolutely on the side of public.”

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Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2024