England hands weight-loss jabs to hundreds of children, some under 12

A Guardian investigation, built on freedom of information requests to the NHS Business Services Authority, found 419 prescriptions for GLP-1 medications were issued to children under 18 in England during the 2025-26 financial year. Ten of those went to children younger than 12. In the four months from April to July this year, 341 prescriptions reached children, 15 of them under 12.

The figures cover England prescriptions dispensed in community settings anywhere in the UK. They skip private prescriptions, prisons and hospitals entirely, so the true number is likely a considerable underestimate. One private clinic for children has already said it has more than 200 patients on the jabs. It's also unclear whether every prescription was written primarily for weight loss — GLP-1s were first developed to help people with type 2 diabetes control blood sugar before becoming a slimming phenomenon.

The prescriptions are climbing alongside childhood obesity. National Child Measurement Programme figures show 10.7% of reception-year children, aged 4 and 5, are obese, jumping to 22.8% in year 6, aged 10 and 11. The World Health Organization counts 400 million children and adolescents aged five to 19 as overweight in 2024, including 170 million living with obesity. NHS England has been piloting Complications from Excess Weight clinics since 2021 for children aged two to 16 with severe obesity, and in May said almost 6,500 children had been referred — more than 400 of them younger than four.

Martin Whyte, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Surrey, said the prescription count is still small next to the scale of childhood obesity, but that young patients need lasting lifestyle change. “The important thing is that children who start them do so within specialist services, with support for diet, growth and wellbeing, and a plan for the long term,” he said. He pointed to regular monitoring of growth and puberty, nutritional intake, mental health, eating behaviours and side effects, noting weight tends to return when the drugs stop and that long-term data on growing young people is limited.

Dr Dunia Ismail, a consultant paediatrician who runs a CEW clinic, said experts are now looking at widening GLP-1 use in those settings. “We have been sticking to 12 [years], although now we are looking at expanding that to eight-plus once licence-approved,” she said. That push runs against new global guidance issued by the WHO last month, which said obesity medications including GLP-1s should not be given to children under 10. Novo Nordisk, the maker of Wegovy and Victoza, recently ran a trial with 165 children aged 6 to under 12 that suggested the drugs can help young children with obesity.

Julian Hamilton-Shield, a professor in diabetes and metabolic endocrinology at the Bristol CEW clinic, said children there who receive semaglutide had typically failed standard dietary and psychological support, and usually carry a secondary condition such as type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnoea or liver disease. He stressed the drugs go to children with very high excess weight. “We're not one that makes moral judgments about people,” he said. “Nobody's saying that every child who's a bit heavy should have a GLP-1.” He described patients from complex backgrounds with low self-esteem and school absence, where losing 25 or 30kg can hand them agency for the first time. Ismail put it bluntly: “Obesity is not a choice, it's a condition.”