{"id":68339,"date":"2025-12-13T11:52:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T09:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/?p=68339"},"modified":"2026-01-16T23:38:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T21:38:23","slug":"weight-loss-drugs-who-wants-them-to-be-low-cost-and-accessible-to-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/weight-loss-drugs-who-wants-them-to-be-low-cost-and-accessible-to-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Weight-loss drugs: Who wants them to be low-cost and accessible to all"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from\u00a0Repubblica<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026 The WHO\u2019s new therapeutic guidelines\u2014as reported by\u00a0Politico<\/i>\u2014include a\u00a0conditional recommendation<\/b>\u00a0for the use of so-called\u00a0GLP-1<\/b>\u00a0drugs, such as\u00a0Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro<\/b>. More specifically, the WHO described its recommendation as \u201cconditional\u201d due to the limited data on the long-term effectiveness and safety of GLP-1s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although GLP-1s are now an established treatment in high-income countries, the WHO fears they could reach\u00a0less than 10%<\/b>\u00a0of the people who could benefit from them by\u00a02030<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Obesity worldwide and in Italy<\/b><\/p>\n

Among the countries with the highest obesity rates are those in the\u00a0Middle East<\/b>,\u00a0Latin America<\/b>\u00a0and the\u00a0Pacific Islands<\/b>. Worldwide,\u00a0800 million<\/b>\u00a0people live with obesity, and that number is expected to grow\u2014by\u00a02035<\/b>\u2014to\u00a01.9 billion<\/b>, with an estimated economic impact of\u00a0$4.32 trillion<\/b>. According to the\u00a0Italian Barometer Obesity Report 2024<\/b>, published by the\u00a0Ibdo Foundation<\/b>\u00a0and based on data from\u00a0ISTAT<\/b>\u00a0and the\u00a0Italian National Institute of Health (Istituto Superiore di Sanit\u00e0)<\/b>,\u00a011.8%<\/b>\u00a0of Italy\u2019s adult population suffers from obesity, up from\u00a011.4%<\/b>\u00a0in 2022.\u00a036.1%<\/b>\u00a0of adults are overweight, with a steady increase over the past ten years. The spread of obesity among children is particularly concerning: about\u00a019%<\/b>\u00a0of children aged\u00a08\u20139<\/b>\u00a0are overweight and\u00a09.8%<\/b>\u00a0are obese.<\/p>\n

The WHO would like pharmaceutical companies to consider introducing\u00a0tiered pricing<\/b>\u00a0(lower prices in low-income countries) and\u00a0voluntary licensing<\/b>\u00a0of patents and technologies, enabling other manufacturers worldwide to produce GLP-1s and thereby expanding access to these medicines.\u00a0Jeremy Farrar<\/b>, WHO\u2019s Chief Scientist, told\u00a0Politico<\/i>\u00a0that the guidelines would also give \u201cyellow and green light<\/b>\u201d to generic-drug manufacturers to produce cheaper versions of GLP-1s once patents expire.<\/p>\n

Dr. Reddy\u2019s Laboratories launches in India<\/b><\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0Dr. Reddy\u2019s Laboratories<\/b>, an Indian pharmaceutical company, has announced plans to introduce a generic, lower-cost version of\u00a0Novo Nordisk\u2019s<\/b>\u00a0hugely popular\u00a0Wegovy<\/b>\u00a0in\u00a087 countries<\/b>\u00a0next year. The announcement was made recently by CEO\u00a0Erez Israeli<\/b>. Dr. Reddy\u2019s initially plans to launch the generic version of\u00a0semaglutide<\/b>\u2014the active ingredient in Novo\u2019s Wegovy and the diabetes drug\u00a0Ozempic<\/b>\u2014in\u00a0Canada, India, Brazil, Turkey<\/b>\u00a0and other emerging markets, subject to patent expiry. And the others? \u201cThe United States and Europe will open up later\u2026 and all other Western markets will become accessible between\u00a02029 and 2033<\/b>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WHO\u2019s new therapeutic guidelines\u2014as reported by\u00a0Politico\u2014include a\u00a0conditional recommendation\u00a0for the use of so-called\u00a0GLP-1\u00a0drugs, such as\u00a0Wegovy, Ozempic and Mounjaro. More specifically, the WHO described its recommendation as \u201cconditional\u201d due to the limited data on the long-term effectiveness and safety of GLP-1s. Although GLP-1s are now an established treatment in high-income countries, the WHO fears they could reach\u00a0less than 10%\u00a0of the people who could benefit from them by\u00a02030.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68340,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,4],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-68339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-food-and-health","category-health","tag-obesity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68341,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68339\/revisions\/68341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fondazioneguidovenosta.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}