Rishi Sunak has announced new funding for a “mission” to tackle the UK’s £6.1bn obesity crisis.
The prime minister is to meet with business leaders and NHS bosses in a bid to come up with a new strategy for tackling obesity, based on the successful rollout of the Covid vaccines.
He said the government would invest more than £100m to tackle the “biggest public health challenges facing our country”.
Former PM Boris Johnson first promised the government would use the pandemic response as a model for tackling issues including obesity, in July 2021.
Today Sunak said the funding would be invested into four healthcare missions – cancer, obesity, mental health and addiction.
The government wants to to unlock the next generation of medicines and diagnostics to save lives, transform patient care and ensure UK patients are the first to benefit from medical breakthroughs.
It told The Grocer further measures would be announced to set out how sectors including the food industry woud be involved in the strategy.
Ministers said the funding would include a £20m to trial how best to deliver new medicines and technologies for people living with obesity, particularly in deprived communities across the UK.
This would look at how to better support people to achieve a healthy weight including “cutting-edge technologies” and digital tools to improve long-term health outcomes.
“The NHS faces real pressures, which is why we are investing over £100m in the technologies and medicines of the future to address some of the biggest public health challenges facing our country,” said Sunak.
“This funding will improve outcomes for patients, ease existing pressures on the system and ensure that we are amongst the first to benefit from medical breakthroughs. Importantly it will also help save the NHS millions of pounds that could otherwise be spent on patient care – for example by tackling obesity, which costs the health service over £6bn annually.
“It is hugely welcome too that the highly successful Vaccine Taskforce, which procured millions of life-saving vaccines in record time during the pandemic, will now become a blueprint for how we harness the best talent and expertise from around the world and drive investment in research and development.”
Health and Social Care secretary Steve Barclay said: “Conditions such as cancer and obesity prevent people leading long, healthy lives and cost the NHS billions of pounds every year.
“We’re leading the way in cutting-edge research which can find new ways to speed up diagnosis, enhance treatments and ensure a better quality of life for patients – both now and in the future.”
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