A record £1.5BILLION was spent last year on doling out diabetes drugs amid a deepening obesity crisis
Last year, a record £1.5 billion was spent on diabetes medicines, according to shocking figures.
The cost of prescription drugs such as metformin and insulin has increased by 50 percent in the past five years. One in seven pounds spent on prescriptions is now for diabetes.
The rising NHS fees come as obesity rates have skyrocketed, with two-thirds of adults now considered fat.
Being overweight is the biggest risk factor for type 2 diabetes, the type that affects the vast majority of the country’s 5 million diabetics. Patients can easily reverse the condition by losing weight.
Experts warned today that the UK is now in a ‘ridiculous situation’.
Prescription costs for diabetes medicines have risen by 50 per cent over the past five years, costing the healthcare system more than £1.5 billion a year
Since 2021, semaglutide prescriptions are up more than 50 percent, from 737,000 to just under 107 million
Tam Fry, president of the National Obesity Forum, said, “We should really try to prevent obesity in the first place.”
Ministers have received repeated calls to get to grips with the crisis amid warnings it could ‘bankrupt the NHS’.
Data from the NHS Business Services Authority shows that more than 3.4 million diabetics were on medication in 2022/23.
This is higher than the 2.7 million in 2015/16, when modern records began.
Together, nearly 66 million prescriptions were distributed, or the equivalent of 180,000 a day.
Nearly 15 percent of the total bill was spent on semaglutide, branded Ozempic. However, it made up only one of the 56 items distributed.
The game-changing jab, believed to cost the NHS around £100 per dose, is given to diabetics to help lower their blood sugar levels.
However, it also helps people lose weight, leading doctors and pharmacists to beg to give Ozempic only to patients who really need it. Another version of semaglutide, known as Wegovy, will soon be distributed on the NHS for that reason.
Only 190,000 doses of semaglutide were dispensed in 2018, when it began to be rolled out in healthcare.
Mr Fry said: ‘We are now entering an era that I think is extremely worrying. We are now in a ridiculous situation.
“We have a really good drug that’s great for diabetics and it should only be used for diabetics and not for weight loss where it’s being misused.”
“For weight loss and obesity, it’s totally inappropriate to use if you don’t have a BMI over 35.
‘For me it is absolutely bananas that we are now starting to spend a lot of money on a fairly expensive drug, when we should actually be trying to prevent obesity in the first place.’
NHS England approved a new low-calorie diet for obese Britons last year after a trial found people lost more than two stone in three months.
Overweight patients are referred by their GP and receive free NHS low-calorie shakes and soups for three months.
More than 5 million people in the UK have diabetes and 90 per cent have type 2.
The most common treatment for the type 2 form is metformin, an inexpensive drug that helps the body respond to insulin, a hormone made in your pancreas that helps the body use glucose for energy.
Type 1 diabetics cannot produce insulin, so they must inject it to control their sugar levels.
With type 2 diabetes, the insulin they make doesn’t work properly or their body doesn’t produce enough.
If patients do not respond to metformin or develop side effects, some are given more expensive alternatives such as Invokana, Forxiga and Jardiance.