Obesity surgery in line for $2m funding boost

The Government is expected to announce a significant increase in its spending on obesity surgery.

Associate Health Minister Tariana Turia is understood to be preparing to announce next week, a four-year, $2 million increase in state funding of bariatric surgery.

This would pay for about 30 operations a year in addition to the 250 done at present.

Labour Party health spokeswoman Ruth Dyson said although the surgery was crucial for a small number of people, it was ironic the state was increasing spending on it while healthy-eating programmes were cut back.

The surgery can cost more than $20,000, but the preferred operation at the Counties Manukau District Health Board, which involves removing more than 80 per cent of the stomach by keyhole surgery - called sleeve gastrectomy - costs around $15,000.

State-funded access is patchy. Auckland's three district health boards and Waikato pay for the surgery, but most other DHBs don't.

About 400 people a year, including Anne Tolley - now Education Minister - and fellow National MP John Hayes, pay for the surgery themselves.

Mrs Turia, who herself paid to have bariatric surgery done privately last year, could not be contacted yesterday, but has long advocated increased public funding.

"I would really like to see it being a treatment of choice for morbidly obese patients," she has said.

Morbidly obese means severely obese - a body mass index of over 40 - or a BMI of over 35 with significant illnesses like type 2 diabetes. The "normal" BMI range is 18.5 to 25.

In 2008, DHBs nationally provisionally supported a proposal to operate on more than 900 morbidly obese people a year, at a cost of $17 million in the first year and $15 million in the following two years.

With two-thirds of adults overweight or obese, the Ministry of Health estimates the annual health costs of obesity are around $460 million. Bariatric surgery is considered the only treatment that works for the morbidly obese and it saves money in the long term.

A study of 100 bariatric surgery patients at Counties found the average weight lost was 39kg for those whose BMI had been less than 50 - 71 per cent of their excess weight.

Those with a greater BMI lost 44kg on average - 54 per cent of their excess weight.

Richard Babor, one of Counties' four bariatric surgeons - a fifth will be hired next year - said the surgery had a dramatic effect on diabetes. The disease ended in more than 70 per cent of patients who had it beforehand.

"That has a big impact on the quality of life of patients and their health but it is also one of the clearly justifiable selection criteria in terms of the health economics ..."

Counties has made the presence of diabetes one of the patient selection criteria for bariatric surgery. Others include being of BMI 40 to 55, age 20 to 50, and proving their weight-loss motivation by losing 5kg to 10kg.