Covid prompts HSE move to increase weight-loss surgeries here
THE HSE is looking at dramatically increasing access to weight-loss surgeries in the battle against Ireland’s obesity epidemic.
Dr Donal O’Shea, the HSE’s clinical lead for obesity, has revealed plans to perform 1,200 bariatric procedures over the next three to four years.
The initiative will see obesity treated as a chronic disease, rather than a problem that relies solely on personal responsibility, diet as well as exercise.
Figures show people with obesity are 80pc more likely to be hospitalised with Covid-19 and 40pc more likely to die from the virus.
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Dr O’Shea said the pandemic has been the catalyst needed for the health service to take urgent action.
“There is now a real appetite high up in the HSE to start bariatric programmes, building up to 1,200 operations annually over the next three to four years,” he said.
“The best we ever got to was 100 surgeries in one year, so to reach these levels on a sustainable annual basis will bring respectability to Ireland compared to other countries.”
More than 100 dieticians will be recruited as part of the drive. These will include 54 who will deliver weight management sessions in primary care centres close to where people with obesity live and another 54 who will work in diabetes prevention programmes.
Before the pandemic, an estimated 4,000 obesityrelated deaths were recorded in Ireland every year, while 40,000 are predicted over the next decade.
Dr O’Shea said a new anti-obesity drug, Semaglutide, which can cut body weight by up to 20pc, is expected to be approved by the European Medicines Agency early next year and will be available to Irish patients by that summer.
Once it passes government checks, up to 750,000 adults here (15pc of the entire population) will be eligible for the treatment.
“This has been a treatment that the obesity and pharmaceutical industry have been looking at for 30 years, and it has finally come to the point where we have a one-anda-half-year study showing 50pc of people lose more than 15pc of their body weight,” Dr O’Shea said.
“It is the major breakthrough drug we have been looking for and it will pave the way for even more progress with drug treatment.”
Dr O’Shea said he will work to ensure the drug is made available to medical card holders.
“We need to ensure that those who need it most — for example, people from lower socio-economic backgrounds — have access to it,” he said.
“As it stands now, there is no drug which treats obesity that is reimbursed or covered by the medical card or the drug payment schemes in Ireland.
“That just tells you the stigma that goes with obesity. People think, ‘It’s your fault, just eat less, move more’.”
Dr O’Shea’s patients who have undergone the drug treatment have been “shocked” by the results.
“They say, ‘My God, this is a complete game-changer when nothing has worked in the past’,” he said.
Dr O’Shea has seen a stark divide in how the pandemic has impacted on his patients.
“There has been a 50-50 split,” he said. “Fifty per cent of people are finding lockdown is helping them establish a new routine, but 50pc have found it really stressful and are turning to processed foods and finding it difficult to exercise.”
The takeaway industry is thriving, but fast food is not to blame.
“I don’t think this is the right time to be looking at a blame culture,” Dr O’Shea said. “They are doing their job and they do it well.
“Our job is to tell people: ‘If your consumption of high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar food has gone up, then, as we get into brighter, longer days, can you have a look at ways of changing it?’
“Behavioural change is about small changes you can persist with. The all-or-nothing approach is too challenging and unsustainable.”
Dr O’Shea said his own habits have been affected.
“In our house, we would have had one or two takeaways a month prior to the coronavirus pandemic, now we are twice that, but we still eat together as a family rather than going off to separate rooms,” he said.
“It has been a phenomenally stressful time for everybody in this country in the last year. There is no exception.”
‘In our house, we would have had one or two takeaways a month, now we are twice that’