Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingBy Adrienne MurrayBusiness reporter, CopenhagenAt his home in Denmark Casper Nielsen retrieves a package from the fridge and prepares to inject his next dose.”So this is Wegovy, you take it four times a month,” says the 45-year-old. “Before, I thought, ‘maybe I’m not getting to be 60, maybe I’m not seeing my grandkids’.”But now I’m looking at the future way brighter. [Two years ago] I started on 159kg [25 stone]… Right now, I’m weighing 93.5kg, so I’m in a really good place.”Fuelled by a social media buzz and celebrity users including Elon Musk, Wegovy is a weight-loss drug that has been flying off pharmacy shelves.Such has been the rise in its global sales that its manufacturer, Danish drug-maker Novo Nordisk, last year became Europe’s most valuable listed company.”I think the only drug which it can be compared with is Viagra,” says Kurt Jacobsen, a professor of business history at Copenhagen Business School, in reference to Wegovy’s popularity.Image source, ReutersAimed at people who are severely overweight, Wegovy’s active ingredient is a medicine called semaglutide, which helps control blood sugar, lowers appetite, and makes patients feel fuller. It is also the active ingredient in sister drug Ozempic, which is used to treat type 2 diabetes.Research suggests that Wegovy patients can lose more than 10% of their body weight.However, there can be side effects for some users, such as nausea and vomiting, and research shows that patients often put weight back on after stopping treatment.These issues have not slowed sales of Wegovy, which increased five-fold in 2023. It is currently available in eight countries – Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the UAE, the US and the UK – with Japan due to follow at the end of February.In the UK it is now prescribed by some specialist NHS weight-loss management services, for patients who meet specific criteria. It is also available from some private clinics.Yet as the BBC reported back in September, only limited supplies had come into the country.Meanwhile, Ozempic is now the world’s biggest-selling diabetes drug. The runaway sales of both drugs has led to surging earnings at Novo Nordisk. At the end of January it announced that its annual net profit had jumped by 51% to 83bn Danish kroner ($12bn; £9.6bn).Speaking to the BBC, the firm’s chief financial officer Karsten Munk Knudsen admits that Ozempic and Wegovy’s huge popularity had initially caught the firm off guard. “The demand in the market, both in diabetes and obesity, has just stepped up, much more than we ever forecasted. Much more than anyone forecasted,” he says.He expects those strong sales will continue in 2024, “we’re guiding for 18 to 26% growth”.Whether Novo Nordisk can keep keep up with orders for Wegovy remains to be seen, says Emily Field, a pharmaceutical sector analyst at Barclays bank. “The underlying demand is so overwhelming, they can’t make enough of it,” she says.Mr Knudsen acknowledges that the company won’t be able to meet demand “any time soon”, but adds that it is investing heavily to expand manufacturing capacity. “We’re really building new facilities like never before.”For Denmark, a small country of less than six million people, Novo Nordisk is now so big that it’s having an outsized impact on the Danish economy. Denmark’s economic growth was 1.1% over the first nine months of 2023. But strip away the pharmaceutical sector, dominated by Novo, and the economy shrank by 0.8%. The country is now publishing separate economic statistics, minus the drugs industry.Image source, Casper NeilsenFor almost a century, Novo Nordisk had focused on producing insulin. However the company has been transformed by its discovery of semaglutide in 2004. Several years later the medicine was developed as a treatment for diabetes, and the weight loss effect came as a surprise. Ozempic was approved for sale in the US in 2017, and in 2018 in the EU. Wegovy followed in the US in 2021, and in the EU in 2022.Dr Maria Kruger, a GP and spokesperson for the Danish Society for General Medicine, says that the number of patients now asking for Wegovy has “astonished” doctors, and she thinks that stronger guidance is needed for who should get it. “Social media is really affecting people,” she adds. “I think it’s the idea we are having that the perfect body has to be slim and thin.”Conversely, she says that some people in Denmark who might benefit from taking Wegovy find it too expensive, as users in the country have to pay the full-market price for the drug.”The patients who are really struggling with weight and maybe cannot work, and have physical disabilities, many of them cannot afford this drug,” says Dr Kruger. “I think it’s an inequality in health.”Meanwhile, some medical insurance providers in Denmark and the US are refusing to cover Wegovy due to concerns over its high price, together with rising patient numbers, and uncertainly over the length of treatment time.Yet with worldwide obesity levels having almost tripled over the past 50 years, and tipped to hit one billion people by 2030, the success of Wegovy has set off a weight-loss drugs arms race.Back in November, American pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly was given clearance in the US to sell its rival Zepbound. Its sister drug aimed at treating diabetes, Mounjaro, was already on the market.”Novo and Lilly have such a large head start,” says Barclay’s Ms Field. “Everyone’s tripping hand over foot to catch up.”Novo Nordisk’s Mr Knudsen shrugged off the increased competition: “The market potential is so big that there’s more than enough space for two or even more competitors.” Back at Casper Nielsen’s home in Zealand, he says that continuing to take Wegovy is keeping the weight off.”Before I’d tried all the different kinds of diets a million times… and it was always the same, same story, I lost a lot of weight. And as soon as I let go of the diet just a little bit, I gained the weight in no time, and even a little bit more. “But now I’m thinking, ‘well, I’m gonna actually have my grandkids and I’m going to play with them’. I’m going to do all the things that a granddad should do.”

Published2 days agoSharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingDenmark and Greenland have formally agreed to launch a two-year investigation into historic birth control practices carried out for many years on Inuit Greenlanders by Danish doctors.Thousands of Inuit women and girls were fitted with an intrauterine device (IUD), commonly known as a coil, during the 1960s and 70s. It is a contraceptive device placed inside the womb – or uterus – to prevent pregnancy. Among the women and girls fitted with an IUD was Naja Lyberth.It was in the 1970s that a doctor told Naja, who believes she was then aged about 13, to go to her local hospital to have a coil implanted following a routine school medical examination.”I didn’t really know what it [was] because he never explained or got my permission,” says Naja, who at the time was living in Maniitsoq, a small town on Greenland’s west coast. “I was afraid. I couldn’t tell my parents,” she says. “I was a virgin. I had never even kissed a boy.” Now 60, Naja is one of the first to speak out about what happened.”I can remember the doctors [in] white coats, and maybe there was a nurse. I saw the metal things [stirrups] where you should spread your legs. It was very frightening. The equipment the doctors used was so big for my child body – it was like having knives inside me.”Image source, Naja LyberthNaja says her parents’ permission had not been sought, and that her classmates were also sent to hospital but did not talk about it because “it was too shocking”. She has set up a Facebook group to allow women to share their common experiences and help each other cope with the trauma. More than 70 women have joined.A recent podcast, Spiralkampagnen (“coil campaign”), found records indicating that up to 4,500 women and girls – roughly half of all fertile females – had an IUD implanted in Greenland between 1966 and 1970. But the procedures continued into the mid-1970s. Of these, it is unclear how many cases lacked consent or proper explanation.Among those affected were girls as young as 12, and several have stated publicly that they were not properly informed. Some women unable to have children suspect the coil is to blame.”So many women contact me,” says Naja. “It seems that the younger the girls were, the more complications they get from this coil. It’s so sad.”Arnannguaq Poulsen had a coil fitted when she was 16, not in Greenland but on Danish soil. She was studying at a boarding school for Greenlandic children on the island of Bornholm in 1974.”They didn’t ask me before the procedure, and I had no idea what it was all about, or what the coil was,” she says.She could only travel home once a year and is certain her parents were not consulted. Arnannguaq describes suffering pains, and says she had the coil removed when she returned home to Greenland a year later, aged 17.”I feel that I didn’t get a choice back then, and I cannot accept that,” the 64-year-old says, tearfully. “How would people react if it was Danish women instead of Greenlandic?” There was little knowledge of the birth control programme in either Greenland or Denmark, and the reports have caused shock and indignation.Now, a committee will examine the pregnancy prevention practices carried out by Danish health authorities between 1960 and 1991, both in Greenland and at schools in Denmark with Greenlandic students. Greenland’s government only took control of health policy from Copenhagen in 1992.In a statement on Friday, Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said the investigation would shed light on the decisions leading up to the practice, and how it was carried out. He said he had met several of the women affected, adding: “The pain, physically and emotionally, that they have experienced is still there today.”Greenland transitioned from a colony to a county of Denmark in 1953.Sweeping modernisation plans ushered in better healthcare and living conditions. Life expectancy and new-born survival rates improved.But those successes brought other challenges, says Soeren Rud, a historian at Copenhagen University.Greenland’s tiny population rocketed, and by 1970 it had almost doubled.Image source, Getty ImagesMr Rud believes the rationale for introducing the coil was partly financial, but also the result of colonial attitudes.”There’s an obvious interest in trying to limit the growth of the population,” he says, adding that it reduces “the challenges of providing housing and welfare services”.A high proportion of young single mothers was another concern that prompted family-planning initiatives.Doctors wrote about the coil initiative in journals, perceiving it a success, Mr Rud adds. Records show the birth rate halved in just a few years.Katrine Jakobsen, from Nuuk, says she was only 12 when she had a coil fitted. She remembers being taken to the doctor by a relative’s girlfriend in 1974.She had the coil for almost two decades and suffered pain and a string of complications. In her late 30s, her uterus was removed.BBCI remember right after the procedure, I was in so much pain that I just sat down in the snow.Katrine Jakobsen, from Nuuk, GreenlandDescribing having a coil fitted at a young age “It’s had a big impact on my life. I never had children,” she says. “I never told anyone. I always thought I was alone in this.”Today’s IUDs are small T-like devices, but earlier versions in the 1960s were S-shaped and much larger. “In a uterus that had never been pregnant, it would give more bleeding, more pain, a bigger risk of infection,” says Dr Aviaja Siegstad, a gynaecologist at Queen Ingrid’s Hospital in Nuuk.In the 1990s and 2000s, she and her colleagues came across patients struggling to conceive who were unaware they had a coil. It was not a big number, she says, but it was also not unusual. “In a couple of cases we were able to date the IUD back to women who had abortions and probably had it placed after an abortion without being told,” she adds.According to Greenland’s Human Rights Council, conventions on family life and privacy were breached.”We need to get it investigated to know whether or not it was actually a genocide,” says the council’s chairperson Qivioq Loevstroem, adding: “We don’t want a whitewashed report.”Greenland’s health minister, Mimi Karlsen, said involving Greenland in the investigation was “necessary to get to the bottom” of what happened.It follows other controversies that have seen Denmark’s past relationship with Greenland come under increased scrutiny. In March, Denmark apologised and paid compensation to six Inuit who were separated from their families and sent to Denmark as part of failed 1950s social experiment.During the summer, Greenland’s parliament voted for a separate commission to examine Denmark’s decolonisation after 1953.Counselling has been offered to those affected by the birth control practice, but Arnannguaq Poulsen hopes there will be compensation. “I know there are many women that cannot have children,” she says. More on this storyDenmark says sorry to children of failed experiment9 MarchInuit seek Denmark compensation over experiment23 November 2021