Britain’s Battle of the Bulge Gets a Shot in the Arm: Free Fat-Busting Jabs Coming to a Chemist Near You
(Cheese Board Not Included)
So, here’s a headline to chew on while you nibble on your low-fat rice cake… weight-loss jabs could soon be handed out for free at your local pharmacy. Yes, that’s right. No hospital visits, no six-month wait, and no need to pretend your knees hurt more than they do just to get seen. Just stroll into Boots, Superdrug or whatever’s left of the high street, get a quick chat with someone in a lab coat, and boom… an injection that tells your body it’s full when you’ve barely started on the cheese board.
It’s all part of the NHS’s latest attempt to tackle Britain’s ever-expanding waistline. And let’s be honest, it’s about time. Currently, these miracle jabs, the likes of Wegovy and Mounjaro, are trapped in NHS hospital clinics with waiting lists longer than the queue for Glastonbury tickets. Only about 50,000 people have managed to get their hands (or rather, thighs) on them. Meanwhile, a staggering 15 million Brits qualify as obese. That’s basically everyone in a Greggs on a Saturday morning.
Now, if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to wait two years to be told you’re fat and then another year to do something about it, you could always go private. For around £150 a month, Boots will sell you the stuff today… no waiting, no fuss, and possibly no more late-night kebabs.
But that’s not exactly cheap. So the government, in a rare moment of what looks dangerously like common sense, is planning a trial to give out Mounjaro through community pharmacies. That’s right, your local chemist might soon become your weight-loss guru, doling out injections that help you shed 20% of your body weight… the sort of result no cabbage soup diet could ever achieve without you losing the will to live.
Of course, they’re targeting the usual suspects… deprived areas with sky-high obesity rates and unemployment figures to match. Because apparently, if you’re not working, you’ve got more time to eat crisps. (Or at least more time to watch daytime telly while eating them.)
Pharmacists are already prescribing antibiotics like they’re handing out tic-tacs, so it’s not a huge stretch for them to move into the realm of weight-loss wizardry. Have a quick natter about your blood pressure, maybe check if you still have a pulse, then jab you in the arm and send you on your way.
According to the NHS’s own obesity guru, this is all very “exciting.” And let’s face it, if you work for the NHS, handing out weight-loss drugs without having to wrangle GPs or hospital paperwork probably does count as a bit of a thrill.
Meanwhile, the Tony Blair Institute (yes, that Tony Blair, still around and apparently now running a think tank instead of countries into wars) has waded in, claiming that unless the government starts rolling this out at scale, their entire obesity plan is basically toast. Buttered toast. With jam. And sprinkles.
And in the spirit of giving things an even more heroic spin, the government has teamed up with drug-maker Eli Lilly to run a five-year trial in Manchester… aiming to prove that if you help people lose weight, they might actually be able to go back to work and stop costing the NHS £11.4 billion a year in type 2 diabetes bills. Groundbreaking stuff really.
So there you have it. The war on wobble is going local. No longer do you need a hospital appointment to shed the pounds. Just head to your nearest pharmacy, roll up your sleeve, and let science do the heavy lifting… which, let’s be honest, is more than many of us have done in years.
Now, if only they made a jab for smug cyclists… Would you give these jabs a go, or would you rather just run from your problems… literally?
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
Bsky: @chrisgeiger.com
Bsky: @thecancersurvivorsclub.com
Bsky: @dailydoseofdisbelief.com
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