Labour's Focus on NHS Management Misses the Root of Ill Health

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - this is sad and infuriating, back to yesterday's post about Labour needing to focus on the drivers of ill health to help ease NHS burdens, not just focus on NHS management problems.

Here is a piece in The Guardian saying that the NHS doesn't take obesity seriously enough.

"only about 4,000 people a year undergo obesity surgery, even though specialists say many more would benefit".

WHAT! Shouldn't it be "4,000 people are undergoing unnecessary obesity surgery, something must be done about the food environment in the UK!"

...or instead of "Many people who could benefit from weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro may miss out because of the lack of importance the NHS appears to give obesity and the wide gap between the demand for obesity care and health service’s ability to provide it, warned Joseph, who has set up a firm to provide private care people cannot get on the NHS."

How about 'many people are being given lifelong prescriptions to weight loss drugs at huge expense which may also have significant side effects, why is more not being done to curb the availability of unhealthy and ultra-processed foods and subsidising access to nutritious food to prevent the medicalisation of a very preventable problem."

Have to agree with the NHS spokesperson who says:

“While the NHS can and does play its part, any serious analysis would be clear that as a country we cannot treat our way out of the obesity crisis, and far wider action is needed to stem it at source.”

Labour must focus on preventing these diseases through addressing the inescapable availability of the unhealthy and ultra-processed foods which are deliberately designed to be both addictive and have negligible nutritional content, and so cause overeating.

Inescapable Availability is number 2 of our 5 Economic Drivers of Addiction.

Here is our White Paper on the Economic Drivers here

https://lnkd.in/eYMPjEej


https://lnkd.in/gUJYt-3J