Overweight and obesity in Australia

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) Victoria has six priority action areas to promote healthy weight:

• Ban food advertising to children;

• Simplify food labels;

• Promote physical activity every day;

• Improve clinical tools;

• Improve treatment options; and

• Evaluate and educate.

Bariatric surgery is one of the treatment options that needs to be further explored. Among many other items, AMA Victoria’s state budget submission for the 2008–09 financial year1 calls for a trial of 3000 bariatric surgical procedures to be performed in public hospitals, as part of a comprehensive approach to weight loss.

The evidence before AMA Victoria indicates that bariatric surgery is a safe and cost-effective treatment for a proportion of morbidly obese Victorians.2-5 However, bariatric surgery is an extreme response that should only be explored in extreme circumstances. There are many morbidly obese people who find themselves in these extreme circumstances and may benefit from the surgery if other approaches have failed. Further, bariatric surgery is cost-effective, as the costs are lower than the ongoing costs of treating chronic conditions associated with obesity.

Bariatric surgery is not the only policy approach to obesity being pursued by AMA Victoria. We see it as a small part of the solution, although it has been a larger part of recent media attention on the issue. I am pleased that the AMA has been able to highlight obesity as an important public policy issue, and I look forward to working with a range of partners to explore possible solutions.