By Kirsty Ross
WESTERN Health has spent $1.5 million over the past two years to upgrade its equipment and cater for an increasing number of obese patients.
The money has been spent on bigger beds, scales with higher measures, lifting machines and wider chairs at Sunshine and Footscray hospitals.
Western Health Executive director of operations Maree Wilson said the upgrade had been essential in meeting the changing needs of the community.
“The increasing trend of obesity in our population has required us to review our services and resources to ensure we meet the resulting care requirements of these patients,” Ms Wilson said.
In line with the trend, the State Government in October 2003 gave cash for Western Health to open an obesity clinic at Footscray’s Western Hospital – a unique model for the West offering a range of services in the one location.
So popular is the clinic, offering in and outpatient services, it has a waiting list of up to eight months.
Dieticians, psychologists, physiotherapists, sleep physicians, endocrinologists and occupational therapists see about 300 new patients of the 800 severely obese helped each year.
When the clinic first opened, administrators expected only 400 patients each year.
Patients over 16 years old, with severe obesity, are treated for associated problems including coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, a range of cancers, type 2 diabetes and depression.
Western Health will continue to update its bariatric, or obesity equipment through its capital equipment plan to prepare for an expected growing number of patients.
“A policy on the management of the bariatric patients is being formulated to help inform staff of specific care requirements, and resources required in providing quality care,” Ms Wilson said.
Dr Deepak Dutta, an endocrinologist at the obesity clinic, said although Australian statistics show ed men are more obese than women, the majority of patients are women.
“Maybe because women worry more and are worried more about their appearance – men notoriously don’t seek help,” he said.
Dr Dutta also said he suspected people in the West had higher obesity rates than the overall Australian rate.
“The reason I say that is there have been some studies that show lower socioeconomic status have higher obesity rates,” he said.
However, Dr Dutta said the issue of why some people are overweight and others aren’t, including separated twins and couples on similar diets, is hotly debated and seems to be a genetic mystery.
“I see husband and wife patients, where one is extremely obese and the other isn’t, but they are eating the same food,” he said.
“There are a lot of brain chemicals that affect hunger and how the body works, and we are starting to understand that.”
According to the Medical Journal of Australia, 60 per cent of Australians are overweight with 20 per cent severely overweight.
Lower educational status, higher television viewing time and lower physical activity levels are strongly associated with the epidemic which has more than doubled in the past 20 years.
Dr Dutta said studies also showed obesity decreases life span and that the size of meals has increased, with people eating more if given more.
“We’re living in a land of plenty – a time of plenty,” he said.
Dr Dutta said public awareness campaigns could prove the answer to tackling this “really, really big public health problem”.
People’s eating habits could be changed, like the reduction in smoking resulting from many years of television advertising, he said.
Dr Dutta said the clinic recently ordered costing $3000 to weigh people of more than 150 kilograms, adding they needed more money to keep abreast of the issue, and he predicted Australia would top US obesity rates if we continued on the present path.
