A new partnership announced in Canberra offers a glimpse of what the next phase of the global obesity drug revolution could look like – and the policy debates likely to follow.
Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk, the company behind blockbuster weight-loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, has signed a research agreement with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to explore new models of care for adolescents living with obesity across Pacific Island nations.
The collaboration will begin in Fiji and run for three years, and reflects a broader shift underway in global health as appetite-suppressing medicines known as GLP-1 drugs reshape the treatment of obesity.
Originally developed to treat diabetes, these medications are now transforming obesity care. Clinical trials have shown they can deliver significant and sustained weight loss, raising hopes they could dramatically reduce rates of chronic disease linked to obesity.
Researchers say the potential impact is enormous. Professor Pete Azzopardi, leader of Global Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, warned that without intervention the problem could grow rapidly in coming decades.
By 2050, he said, as many as three-quarters of young people could be living with obesity.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Canberra, Novo Nordisk chief executive Mike Doustdar said Australia needed to think more ambitiously about prevention and treatment.
“A child born in Queensland today may have a lifespan four to five years less than their parents, not because of war, not because of famine, but because of obesity,” he said.
More than 13 million Australian adults are currently overweight or obese – conditions linked to more than 30 diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
“Living with overweight and obesity is more than carrying extra weight,” Mr Doustdar said. “It’s the gateway to chronic disease. Chronic disease has become the health challenge of the century. We cannot ask them to wait, they need help today.”
The rapid rise of GLP-1 medicines has also sparked debate about who should be able to access them.
The World Health Organisation has drawn parallels between expanding access to obesity drugs and the global push to make HIV treatments widely available in the 1980s and 1990s, highlighting the scale of the challenge ahead.
For now, the medicines remain expensive and out of reach for many patients.
Researchers are also continuing to examine the long-term effects of the drugs. While trials show substantial weight loss during treatment, some studies suggest weight can return quickly once patients stop taking them.
Like all medications, GLP-1 drugs can also cause side effects. The most common include nausea, vomiting and gastrointestinal symptoms, while rarer complications such as pancreatitis and gallbladder disease have been reported.
Despite those risks, most doctors say that for people living with obesity and related chronic disease, the benefits of treatment generally outweigh the potential downsides.
Mr Doustdar pointed to Australia’s track record of tackling major public health challenges, including the introduction of plain cigarette packaging in 2012 and the nationwide HPV vaccination program that is expected to eliminate cervical cancer by 2035.
“Australia has solved big public health problems before,” he said. “Now it’s time to do it again.”
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