The NHS war chest used to directly tackle obesity in Northamptonshire has had to more than quadruple in the space of three years to cope with an increase in overweight people, new NHS budget figures are expected to show.

A Freedom of Information request to NHS Northamptonshire has shown the county spent £277,000 on specifically tackling obesity between 2007 and 2008.

But health chiefs say they will have to ramp up their spending to £1.15 million in the next 12 months, excluding money they spend on health trainers and encouraging exercise for the general population.

Health chiefs are being forced to act as latest figures show almost one in four people in Northampton are now classed as obese.

A spokesman for NHS Northamptonshire said tackling obesity was a key priority in its master plan for the next five years.

He added: “Patients are likely to be treated in a range of settings, be that with their GP, one of the weight management programmes or one to one advice and intervention given by such professionals as health trainers, district nurses and health visitors.”

The figures also revealed that, since October last year, the county NHS received 98 requests for obesity-busting bariatric surgery – the equivalent of almost a request every other day.

Options for surgery, which are normally required when patients weigh about double their healthy weight, include stomach stapling, a gastric band or an operation to shorten the gut.

A total of 88 of the operations were accepted since October, with 10 refused.

The £1.15 million spend is a fraction of what the county NHS is forced to lay out on treating diseases which arise as a result of being obese,

The Chron reported in October that, by 2010, the combined cost to Northamptonshire of conditions linked to being obese, like diabetes and heart disease, was likely to be almost £87 million a year, rising to £108 million a year by 2015.

The cost to NHS Northamptonshire of people being either overweight or obese by 2010 was predicted to be £174 million.

Critics of weight loss surgery on the NHS have argued that the public purse should not have to suffer the cost of what is usually perceived as a self-inflicted condition.

But 24-year-old Charlene Cooper, from Kingsthorpe, who lost four stone after a gastric band operation on the NHS, said: “Being overweight is not always a lifestyle choice. With me, for example, my weight problem was proven to be down to polycystic ovaries which caused hormonal problems.

“Even with people for whom that’s not the case, the NHS would spend far more on treating conditions arising from people being obese than it does treating it directly.”

Source: Northampton Chronicle