Ozempic boss’s fat-shaming potshot at city’s battlers – as top doc snaps back
Australia’s former top deputy doctor Nick Coatsworth has called out a senior executive from the company behind weight loss wonder drug Ozempic for ‘fat-shaming’ Western Sydney.
Cem Ozenc lives in Sydney and is head of Oceania for drug company Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of weight loss/diabetes injectable Ozempic.
In a magazine interview, the Turkish-born director said: ‘I’ve always thought about it [Australia in terms of] Olympians, a great sporting country, very health conscious.
‘In my mind was Bondi [Beach]. Everyone is a runner. Everyone is healthy. Everyone is very fit.’
But after moving to Australia in 2022, he says he was confronted with a very different reality.
“Suddenly you go to the west of Sydney, you go to Nepean, and you see, wow, this isn’t the Australia I was thinking about,” he told the AFR‘s Boss magazine.
Ozempic’s corporate boss thought everyone in Australia was athletic, healthy and beautiful
But Cem Ozenc said he found a very different picture when he headed west from Sydney
The comments prompted a response from Dr. Coatsworth, the country’s deputy chief health officer when the Covid pandemic broke out.
He questioned the way the drug company executive had worded his comments, saying he “appears to have shamed Western Sydney”.
“Cem Ozenc, head of Novo Nordisk Oceania, which has been unable to fully supply Ozempic to Australia, appears to have deeply shamed Western Sydney in an article in the AFR,” he posted on social media platform X.
A shortage of supply of Ozempic in Australia has plagued users of the wonder drug and pharmacies have struggled to keep up with demand.
The problem has caused profound health consequences and stress for many of those affected.
Dr. Coatsworth told Daily Mail Australia the company would have to focus on ramping up deliveries of the drug, potentially putting lives at risk because of the delays.
“The studies sponsored by Novo Nordisk, Mr. Ozenc’s employer, have shown, if we are to believe them, that for every 40 obese patients treated with Ozempic, one heart attack can be prevented,” he said.
Dr. Coatsworth then focused on Ozempic’s lack of availability and the dangerous impact it could have here in Australia.
Cem Ozenc (left) lives in Sydney and is the head of Oceania for pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of Ozempic for weight loss/diabetes – and his comments have sparked a backlash from Dr. Nick Coatsworth (right)
A shortage of supply of Ozempic in Australia has plagued users of the wonder drug and pharmacies have struggled to keep up with demand
“Mr. Ozenc has compared Ozempic to Viagra, but missing Viagra has little health impact,” he added.
‘Missing Ozempic has a material impact on the health of Australians.’
The World Health Organization found that Australia had the third highest percentage of overweight adults in the English-speaking world in 2007.
Since then, obesity rates in Australia have continued to rise.
According to the OECD, Australia ranks ninth among its members in the proportion of people aged 15 and over who are overweight or obese, above the OECD average of 60 percent.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of adult Australians who are overweight or obese has increased over the past decade from 62.8 percent in 2012 to 65.8 percent in 2022.
The split between those who are overweight (35.6 percent) and obese (31.3 percent) is approximately equal.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Novo Nordisk for comment.