Obesity

Obesity is a complex disease defined by excessive fat accumulation. The WHO defined the obesity as an “epidemic” illness¹, and it afflicted 1.9 billion patients in the world in 2016, and 29% of the Australian population today. If the trend of the recent years continues, obesity will afflict more than 40% of the Australian population before 2030.
Obesity is very dangerous, as it leads to the development of several chronic diseases, some of which are highly damaging to the health of the individual, causing death in the most severe cases. These comorbidities include: dyslipidaemia, sleep apnoea, gallbladder disease, type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, depression, kidney disease, multiple types of cancer, coronary heart disease, and other.

Surgical treatment is the best method to combat obesity, and it has been proven to resolve several obesity-related medical problems, such as type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, stroke, sleep apnoea, lower risks of cancer, and other.
There are several programs to increase awareness and combat obesity in Australia, but access to bariatric surgery remains low compared to the people that need it. In Australia, it is estimated that less than 1% of the people eligible for surgery are receiving the treatment. This is due to costs and lack of extensive public coverage, among other factors.

^{1: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight}