Tackling obesity ‘is not sole responsibility of NHS’

Tackling endemic obesity is not the sole responsibility of the government or NHS, according to the health secretary.

Joint responsibility must be shared with the public, who should do more to look after their own bodies, said Patricia Hewitt.

The comments precede the publication of a Department of Health survey later today, which is widely expected to predict that some 12 million adults and a million children will be clinically obese by 2010. Experts warn that this could potentially put huge strain on the health service in treating obesity-linked problems like hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

Ms Hewitt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “These days our health depends at least as much on what each of us do for ourselves and for our children as it does on what the government or the NHS does for us.”

“The government’s got a responsibility to make it easier for people to make healthy choices for themselves, but at the end of the day it is up to each of us to decide what we eat, what we drink, how much exercise we take and how we bring our children up.”

Diabetes UK, the UK charity, has warned that more people are likely to die from obesity if today’s figures are realised in four years times.

It said that although not all diabetes patients are obese, 80 per cent of patients with type-two diabetes are dangerously overweight.

© Adfero Ltd