The more practitioners and internists know about obesity surgery, the more they refer severely overweight patients to respective clinics and hospitals. Currently only 17.8 percent of 201 physicians do this. They were interviewed in a Germany-wide study of the IFB AdiposityDiseases.
In January 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) presented the final report of the “Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity (ECHO)”. The report states that worldwide at least 41 million children up to the age of 5 are overweight or obese.
Severe overweight poses a growing and increasingly expensive health issue in Germany. The direct sickness costs for the German healthcare system caused by adiposity and its secondary diseases have decisively increased, and reached in 2008 an estimate of 8,6 billion Euro.
The Center of the University Hospital and Medical Faculty Leipzig receives funding for another five-year period from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Its continued existence until 2020 strengthens the Leipzig research focus on civilization and metabolic diseases.