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22nd October 2024
10:26am BST
The HSE’s Clinical Lead for Obesity, Professor Donal O’Shea is urging the government to make the weight loss drug available on the Drugs Payment Scheme.
Ozempic is well-known for its use for weight loss in recent years, but as its popularity began to grow, so too did the backlash around people using it for cosmetic purposes.
It contains an active ingredient called semaglutide and was originally made available for those with type 2 diabetes.
While it can be accessed for weight issues, in Ireland at the moment it is only covered by schemes for people with type 2 diabetes.
Speaking on Newstalk today, Prof Donal O’Shea said we shouldn’t be placing the needs of one group above another.
“It’s covered for diabetes but not for obesity and that kind of ranks one disease as more deserving if you like, than another disease, which I have problems with.
“We finally now have treatments that are helping to treat obesity and they need to become more widely available in the years ahead.
“That is something the HSE is well aware of.
“The World Health Organisation is drawing up guidelines as we speak for the use of these at a global level because access and affordability are the major challenges for obesity management in the decades ahead.”
He went on to say that obesity patients are being charged €140 a month to access the like-changing drug.
“The majority of people look at that, and it is an indefinite treatment, so you’re talking, you know, the bones of €1,500 a year.
“That’s not something many people can add to their list of expenditure.”
There has long been discrimination in Ireland against people with obesity and even though things are beginning to improve, there is a lingering sense of it.
“I would say 10 or 15 years ago, 99.5% of people were going, ‘well, just eat less, move more’ and ‘it’s their fault - take personal responsibility,’” prof O’Shea said.
“I think now we have moved to, about 90% of people still thinking that way and 10% are buying into obesity as a genetic predisposition.
“It’s in your family history and then we have an environment that’s driving a pattern of consumption and sedentary behaviour.”
Finally, he said he will be pushing for Ozempic to be subsidised for obesity patients in the coming year – and noted that even more effective treatments are expected to be rolled out in the coming years.
