Give more people weight loss jabs on the NHS, say MPs

Hundreds of thousands more people should be given access to the weight-loss injection Mounjaro on the NHS in England, a cross-party group of MPs says.

The Health Committee said the current plan for 220,000 people to have this jab for free on prescription in 2028 was a "woefully small number" and "unambitious".

This represents only around 6% of eligible people and is a key reason why more than a million have been paying privately for weight-loss injections, including Mounjaro and Wegovy.

The committee says a two-tier system is emerging in which only the wealthy can get good access to the medication that curbs appetite.

Due to costs, the NHS is currently working on a 12-year rollout for Mounjaro - although this is being reviewed.

It is estimated that if all 2.8 million people eligible for the drug were given it immediately, it would cost the NHS £15.2 billion over five years.

Some of that expense is linked to the NHS relying heavily on GPs to oversee the prescribing and monitoring.

MPs say the NHS must learn from private providers who often use digital platforms to do some of this work.

The MPs said streamlining the process of support for patients could reduce that bill – and they said it also made financial sense because of the overall cost of obesity to the economy – estimated to be around £75 billion a year.

Another weight-loss injection, Wegovy, is available on the NHS, but only through specialist weight management services.

The committee also called for a crackdown on the black market for weight-loss drugs, saying the lack of availability on the NHS had driven people to buy unlicenced products online.

It wants a public awareness campaign to warn about the dangers, along with a review to look at how better to regulate online advertising.

The MPs also criticised the wider system of weight-loss services, saying they were poorly designed and resourced.

They want people to have better access to diet and lifestyle courses and bariatric (obesity) surgery.

Moran said obesity should be treated as a serious health condition, like diabetes.

"People can spend their entire lives battling with their weight. We say the NHS should provide effective, structured support to beat obesity for all those who seek it. Instead, those people are repeatedly failed," she said.

Jack Doughty, of the Obesity Health Alliance, said people living with obesity were being "let down by a fragmented and overstretched treatment system".

"The reality is that the existing treatment services, from behavioural support to weight-loss medications and bariatric surgery, remain patchy and unequal."

NHS England said it was looking at ways to accelerate roll out weight-loss drugs, but was currently “rightly prioritising these treatments for those with the most severe and complex needs“.