Obese patients get a personal trainer to fight the bulge - and taxpayers foot the bill

Obese patients are to be given free gym sessions with a personal fitness trainer to help them shed weight.

Under the NHS scheme, they will be guided through a six-week fitness programme costing £75 per person.

The exercise regime is designed to tackle the growing obesity crisis which already costs the NHS £500 million each year.

A pilot project is due to start early next month and could act as a model for health trusts nationwide.

But critics complained the scheme would take money from patients who have become unwell through no fault of their own and was happening as controversy rages over drug-rationing.

Mark Wallace, campaign director of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "At a time when Alzheimer's patients and people losing their sight are being denied medication that could help them, it is wrong to spend so much money on people who have eaten themselves into obesity.

"These people are going to be encouraged to exercise but surely that could have been done for free in a park rather than at a premium in a gym.

"It would make more sense for people to be encouraged to take responsibility for themselves."

Up to 20,000 people are estimated to have lost their sight after the Government's rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, delayed giving the go-ahead to fund courses of the drug Lucentis for sufferers of wet agerelated macular degeneration.

And earlier this month the Court of Appeal decided NICE's ban on Alzheimer's drugs for some patients on the basis that it was not cost effective was unfair.

The ruling - which followed a Daily Mail campaign - could pave the way for newly-diagnosed patients with 'mild' symptoms of the disease to be given Aricept, Exelon and Reminyl, which cost as little as £2.50 a day.

Suffolk Primary Care Trust will run the gym pilot scheme for people with a body mass index of 30 - the level considered obese. The total cost will be £3,000.

A total of 40 people from Stowmarket Health Centre will be given an individual health assessment before being put on fitness programmes including access to rowing machines and treadmills.

Jez Cooksley, who is in charge of the in-house gym at the surgery, said: "For those who are already seriously overweight, exercise routines, combined with nutritional advice, motivation and support, are absolutely fundamental to achieving a lifestyle change.

"Our goal is to ensure that all our clients experience just how good it feels to feel fit and full of energy."

Around a quarter of UK adults are now classed as obese and the figure is predicted to climb to half the population by 2032.

Clinical obesity causes strokes, heart attacks, type two diabetes and cancers and experts believe the nation's expanding waistlines could lead to the first drop in life expectancy for two centuries.

Three trusts that have since been taken over by Suffolk PCT caused controversy in 2005 when they announced they would be banning obese people from having hip and knee replacements.

They said the decision had been made for 'clinical' reasons - including the failure rate of hip replacements among overweight patients - but admitted it was also "stimulated by pressing financial problems".

A Suffolk PCT spokesman said yesterday: "We will often encourage people to cut their risk of contracting a preventable illness by taking steps such as giving up smoking and losing weight.

"We do our best to educate residents but some people need more support to change their lifestyles for the better.

"Providing this support often represents good value for money as the individual's health will improve and they will become less dependent on medical resources in the long term."