OBESITY DRUGS CAN GIVE £4.5BN BACK TO WORK BOOST

WEIGHT loss jabs could deliver a yearly £4.5billion boost to the UK economy by getting people back to work, a major study reveals.

- Hanna Geissler

Experts estimate benefits beyond immediate health improvements if all eligible patients are prescribed the drugs.

They urged political parties to work together at pace as they found the medication could raise production value by an average of £1,127 per person per year. This included £327 in paid work the equivalent of avoiding five sickness days. Estimates suggest around four million people in England could benefit from weight loss injections.

But only 500,000 are thought to be accessing them, either through the NHS or privately.

The research, which will be presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Malaga, Spain, this weekend sparked fresh calls for the rollout of the GLP-1 class of drugs to be accelerated.

Dr Charlotte Refsum, director of health policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, said: "Obesity places an intolerable strain, not just on our health, but our health system, our benefits system and our economy more widely.