Doctors ration weight loss drugs for teenagers because of a national shortage – triggering a boom in private prescriptions for the skinny jabs

NHS doctors are rationing weight-loss jabs given to hundreds of dangerously obese children due to a national shortage – which has been triggered by a boom in private prescriptions.

Experts are warning that the jab Ozempic, a treatment for people with type 2 diabetes, is being used as a ‘lifestyle’ drug by people who want to shed extra pounds – a fad fuelled by celebrities such as Elon Musk and Kim Kardashian.

People are paying upwards of £700 for a three-month supply of Ozempic on private prescription, while specialist NHS weight management clinics are telling parents of obese children as young as 11 to reduce their dosage and eke out what supplies they have.

Doctors are legally allowed to prescribe Ozempic ‘off label’ for weight loss, rather than diabetes, if they judge there is a clinical need.

A jab designed specifically for weight loss, Wegovy, made by the same Danish company, Novo Nordisk, has been approved in the UK but demand is outstripping supply.

Experts say several hundred morbidly obese teens in the UK are prescribed weight-loss jabs after suffering serious health complications, such as the risk of suffocation from their own neck fat when they sleep – severe sleep apnoea – and type 2 diabetes.

All have a body mass index of at least 30 and some as high as 40. Most expect to be on the drugs for two years, shedding up to 3st, in combination with diet and lifestyle changes.

The NHS funds 21 specialist hospital clinics for obese children. Prof Julian Hamilton-Shield, an expert in diabetes and endocrinology at Bristol University and clinician at Bristol Royal Hospital for Sick Children, said: ‘We are facing a huge national shortage of the drugs needed for our patients. Meanwhile Ozempic is being used as a designer drug. It works well and addresses the complications of obesity, such as type 2 diabetes and obstructive sleep apnoea. We have used it for over two years, we have seen children’s diabetes go into remission.

‘Now we are telling patients to cut back on the amount of the drug they are injecting, to make it last longer. We can’t say when new supplies will come in.’

At the Bristol clinic, there are up to 70 children on the weight-loss jabs, the youngest being 11. The drugs work by mimicking a hunger hormone and tricking the patient’s brain into feeling full.

A Novo Nordisk spokesman said: ‘Due to unprecedented levels of demand, we are experiencing intermittent supply for Ozempic for people living with type 2 diabetes in the UK. We are aware of the uncertainty this is causing and the disruption patients and healthcare professionals are experiencing.’