Sixteen morbidly obese New Zealanders living in Canterbury are being offered weight loss surgery. But they will have to travel to Christchurch.

The funding is coming from the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB), who also offered similar operations to citizens of Dunedin last year.

The surgery involves shrinking the stomach, and will be available for Type 2 Diabetics. It should have an immediate effect.

Richard Flint, an obesity surgeon in Christchurch told reporters that the operations will be offered to relatively young patients who have a Body Mass Index of 34 – 45. A BMI of 30 and over is classed as obese.

Dr. Flint hopes at some stage for the surgery to be made more widespread, in particular for those people with more complicated medical histories.

Currently bariatric treatment costs around NZ$17,000, but it is expected the publicly funded amount will be lower. When asked about the cost, he told reporters: “It’s a financial no-brainer.”

Bariatric surgery is the most common surgery of its type in the USA. Research in that country and elsewhere also suggests that the high cost is recouped quite quickly from savings in others areas. The research also found that patients can live another 13 years on average after having had bariatric surgery. But for it to be a success, Dr. Flint said: “We need to get to these people early.”