The Ukmedix News Team has already reported on the incidence of a Welsh Hospital Authority having to spend more money on stronger hospital beds and now it seem that the same situation has occurred at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. The growing number of obese people is putting astrain on hospital beds all over the UK and thousands of pounds are having to be spent on special reinforced beds that can take the weight of seriously obese people.

The extra money is not only for beds but also for the strengthening of mortuary slabs that can take the weight of the dead obese people. Over 200,000 pounds is being spent so that stronger and larger storage spaces are available for the larger numbers of obese patients that they are seeing.

A spokesman from the hospital said that the fact that they were having to spend these large sums to cope with the obesity epidemic was bringing the problem to the forefront of the nations conciousness and highlighted the need to do something quickly and drastically to cope with it. The obesity cost is not just in the extra beds and mortuarty slabs but in the fact that obesity causes no end of other health complications and problems which again cost money to treat.

The real cost is however that obesity leads to a lower quality of life and lethargy as well as unproductiveness for the nation. Experts estimate that obese people cost the UK's National Health Service 500 million pounds each year and that they account for eighteen million sick days as well as thirty thousand deaths annually.