Patients sent to other hospitals as too fat for scanners

Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust has referred some 48 obese patients to be scanned elsewhere in the NHS in the last three years because of their weight.

It is among a number of NHS trusts which had to refer patients elsewhere, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

The National Obesity Forum, a charity that seeks to raise awareness of obesity, has said this should never need to happen if hospitals had planned ahead properly.

A spokesman from the Obesity Forum said: "Every district general hospital should now never need to transfer their patients for scans.

"The economic case for investing in their own scanner could have been made years ago when it became clear that obesity numbers were not about to decline.

"Indeed, the fat were getting fatter and therefore likely to require more scanning episodes.

"Despatching patients to hospitals miles away is both cumulatively expensive for the hospital and degrading for the individual."

But Walsall Council leader Mike Bird has hit back at the Forum, saying that in most cases obesity is self inflicted and these people should deal with the 'slings and arrows' that come with it.

He said: "Obesity is self inflicted on many occasions. I declare an interest in this because I myself am overweight.

"These people who say it's degrading, the solution is in there hands except in some situations where it's a medical problem.

"It's put up or shut up time, if you don't do anything about it then you need to take the slings and arrows that come with it.

"Obesity is a 21st century illness but also has a 21st century cure."

No one from Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust was available to comment.

Elsewhere in the Black Country, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust which runs Kidderminster Hospital referred 34 patients.

The figures for other trusts in the Black Country and Staffordshire are unknown as they refused to supply the information when asked via a freedom of information request.