A striking postcode lottery is causing thousands to miss out on potentially life-saving weight loss jabs, a Daily Mail analysis has revealed.
Patients in some parts of England are nearly five times more likely to receive ‘King-Kong’ injection Mounjaro than those living elsewhere.
Britons with the easiest access to the blockbuster medication are residents of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.
Meanwhile, NHS patients in Dorset and Derbyshire are struggling to get prescriptions for the jabs.
Mounjaro, rolled out in June last year, is the only weight loss jab to be prescribed by GPs. Rival injections Wegovy and Ozempic are offered by specialist weight-management clinics.
Patients need a body mass index (BMI) of at least 35 and at least one weight-related health condition to get a prescription, according to health watchdog NICE.
Crucially, however, meeting the national criteria does not guarantee treatment.
NHS funding is allocated to local health bodies known as individual integrated care boards (ICBs), which prioritise eligible patients due to limited capacity.
This means two patients who meet the same national criteria can face very different access depending on where they live. In many areas, patients must have four weight-related conditions to qualify.
And even then, availability of the drug varies across England, as our analysis shows.
Studies show Mounjaro can help patients lose around a fifth of their body weight, slashing the risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and even some cancers.
Despite the potentially life-saving benefits, problems with access emerged almost immediately after Mounjaro’s NHS rollout began in June 2025.
Only 18 of England’s then 42 ICBs had started prescribing the treatment two months after the launch, official NHS figures showed.
At the time, only nine ICBs said they had enough funding to treat 70 per cent of eligible patients expected to come forward.
By January, access had improved significantly, with 34 of the 42 ICBs offering Mounjaro to eligible patients. But huge regional disparities remained.
Patients in North East and North Cumbria were almost ten times more likely to receive the drug than those in North East London.
More than a year on, the Daily Mail’s analysis suggests the gap has narrowed – but not disappeared.
The latest June prescribing data reveal an almost five-fold gap between the highest and lowest-prescribing areas.
The NHS handed out over 950 prescriptions per 100,000 residents in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Just 100 miles away in Dorset, the figure was 201.
Four London health boards ranked among the country’s six lowest-prescribing areas, despite some boroughs having among the highest obesity rates in the country.
Northamptonshire had the second-highest prescribing rate in the country, at 889 prescriptions per 100,000 people, followed by Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland at 858, the Black Country at 812 and Lincolnshire at 799.
At the opposite end of the table, Derby and Derbyshire had the second-lowest prescribing rate after Dorset, at just 222 prescription items per 100,000.
London was heavily concentrated at the bottom of the table. Four of the capital’s health boards ranked among the country’s six lowest-prescribing areas.
South East London recorded 298 prescription items per 100,000, West and North London 337, North East London 376 and South West London 389.
Mounjaro is prescribed for the management of diabetes in specific circumstances
Greater Manchester, which sits 21st out of England’s 36 ICBs for Mounjaro prescribing, revealed earlier this year it is prioritising its highest-risk patients.
The Black Country, meanwhile, saw 812 Mounjaro prescriptions per 100,000 residents – the fourth-highest rate in England – which experts suspect is a reflection of high levels of obesity and socioeconomic deprivation.
By January, just 68 patients in North East London had been prescribed Mounjaro following the obesity rollout — a rate almost ten times lower than in North East and North Cumbria.
By June, it still had the fifth-lowest Mounjaro prescribing rate in England, at 376 prescriptions per 100,000.
This is despite the ICB containing Barking and Dagenham, where around seven in ten adults are overweight or obese.
Intriguingly, however, the postcode pattern is almost reversed for Wegovy.
North East London – among the country’s lowest prescribers of Mounjaro – recorded the highest Wegovy prescribing rate in England, at 5.18 items per 100,000.
Staffordshire and Stoke was second, at 4.71, while Cornwall – England’s Mounjaro leader – recorded just 1.15 Wegovy prescriptions per 100,000.
The contrasting pattern may reflect differences in how the drugs are delivered by the NHS.
This suggests local arrangements, rather than obesity levels alone, may be playing a major role in who gets access to treatment.
It comes after the UK became the first country in Europe to approve the weight loss pill Orforglipron.
Made by the US firm behind the Mounjaro injection, Eli Lily, Orforglipron has been shown to help people lose around 12 per cent of their body weight in trials.
It is currently available only privately, but could eventually be offered on the NHS if deemed cost-effective.
