Looming obesity epidemic requires action: experts

Clinics and hospitals across Canada need a major investment to prepare for the impact of an obesity epidemic that could outweigh the effects of smoking on the health-care system, experts warned Thursday.

An estimated 11 million Canadians are overweight, and about half a million of them are morbidly obese and in need of treatment, including surgery, said Arya Sharma, scientific director for the Canadian Obesity Network.

Most facilities, however, aren't equipped to handle them, and current funding levels face a growing backlog of patients. Sharma said negative stereotypes could be influencing government policy.

"There's still so much stigma and bias and discrimination against people who are labouring with obesity that there is not a lot of (government attention) to this population," said Sharma.

Health-care overhaul needed

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman travelled Thursday to Hamilton to announce $700,000 in funding to help a local hospital treat an additional 500 morbidly obese patients next year.

Hospital officials were grateful for the money, but conceded they and their counterparts across the country are going to need a great deal more help in the coming months and years.

Governments can no longer ignore the issue because it's clear it's affecting a large and growing portion of the population, said Murray Martin, president of Hamilton Health Sciences hospital, which received the provincial funding.

"It's certainly becoming recognized that the impact of obesity on society in time will actually exceed the health-care impact of smoking," he said. "And so certainly it's recognized that significant resources over time are going to be needed to deal with this health issue."

Smitherman acknowledged his government needs to do more and said substantially more funding will be put into fighting obesity in the coming years.

"In the next several years in Ontario, I would anticipate that these services will grow by something like six, eight or tenfold," he said, adding that seven hospitals across Ontario currently perform a total of about 400 obesity-related surgeries a year.

"We're at the beginning of a very, very dramatic expansion of services for obese individuals."

Sharma said the country's health facilitiesneed a major overhaul to widen doorways, corridors and washrooms to accommodate specially designed stretchers, wheelchairs and other equipment, he said.

"It starts from seating and simple things like having a blood-pressure cuff of the right dimension, a scale that will weigh over 500 pounds, and it comes down to architectural structure of the actual buildings."

Sharma said he hoped Ontario's announcement Thursday proves to be a signal of more to come across the country, because patients are being forced to turn to commercial weight-loss businesses thatput profit ahead of a patient's well-being.