Reuters
A new class of weight loss drugs developed by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly “opens the possibility of an end to the obesity pandemic” alongside other interventions, the World Health Organization (WHO) said this week. But the global health agency said it has concerns that unless health systems prepare properly, the drugs could distort the response to the global obesity crisis, risking leaving people behind and overshadowing other steps to improve health. The new drugs “have the potential to be transformative”, according to the WHO’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, its director of nutrition, Francesco Branca, and his senior adviser, Francesca Celleti, in an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).