The world needs more than drugs to fight obesity, writes Novo Nordisk’s ex-boss

OVER the next decade, obesity and associated chronic diseases will have a profound impact on economies and global health. Yet for all the publicity around weight-loss treatments, it is clear that pharmaceuticals alone cannot solve a crisis that already affects over a billion people worldwide. The challenge lies not just in developing medicines and other interventions, but also in finding ways to prevent obesity and other chronic diseases before they start.

As chief executive of Novo Nordisk from 2017 until earlier this month, I had a front-row seat to the promise and limitations of pharmaceutical interventions. These interventions have shown potential in weight management, but they cannot on their own address the economic and environmental factors that contributed to the obesity epidemic in the first place.

The latest forecasts in the Lancet are stark: more than half of adults and one in three children and adolescents are set to be obese or overweight by 2050. This represents not just a health catastrophe but an economic one. The annual global cost of obesity alone is forecast to reach US$4.3 trillion by 2035. The economic burden posed by other chronic conditions linked to obesity, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, will be measured in the trillions too. Such eye-popping numbers underline the futility of any notion that treatment alone can be a silver bullet.