‘Her body grows weaker day by day': Children in Gaza starved to the brink of death
'Her hair is falling out, and she has no calcium. She used to have seizures, and she can't go to the bathroom by herself, I have to carry her. She can't walk. She starts crying and asks me, 'Why can't I walk? What's wrong with me?''
On Wednesday, more than 100 aid organisations and human rights groups warned that 'mass starvation' is spreading in Gaza.
The statement, signed by 111 organisations including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam and Save the Children, said that an average of 28 truckloads of aid are being distributed daily in Gaza. The UN has previously said that a minimum of 600 trucks per day are required to feed the population of 2 million people.
Israel denies blocking supplies to Gaza or that there is a famine there.
'We have not identified starvation at this current point in time, but we understand that action is required to stabilise the humanitarian situation,' an unnamed senior Israeli security official said.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry said on Tuesday that 33 people, including 12 children, had died from malnutrition in the previous 48 hours.
Data shared with the London Telegraph by UNICEF suggests the situation has been rapidly worsening in recent months.
In January, 2846 children were diagnosed with malnutrition – a figure that has jumped month on month, to 5870 in June.
Suzan Mohammad Ma'rouf, a clinical nutrition specialist stationed at the Patients Society Hospital, said her staff see nearly 250 to 300 malnutrition cases daily.
'Infants, breastfeeding mothers, and pregnant women who suffer from malnutrition, there is not enough milk and not enough food,' Ma'rouf said.
'We encourage exclusive breastfeeding for children under six months of age, but due to certain conditions the mother may be going through, whether her health is poor or she is suffering from malnutrition, she cannot breastfeed naturally.
'In that case, we turn to formula milk. But currently, formula milk is unavailable or only available in very limited quantities that do not meet the baby's needs, which leads to children suffering from malnutrition.'
Randa – the mother of three-month-old Baraa – has four other young children.
'They cry out from hunger [...] every morning, asking me to knead dough and bake bread. They tell me, 'We're hungry, Mama'.'
Virtually all food aid in Gaza is now only available at just four fixed distribution points along the 41-kilometre strip, run exclusively by the US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
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The Age
3 days ago
- The Age
‘It's shaming for me and appalling for humanity': The doctors bearing witness to Gaza
A young girl lies on an operating table in a hospital in Gaza. She has lost the use of both of her legs from a bomb blast. A British surgeon, Graeme Groom, is about to amputate both legs to save her life. But he does not know her name because she is one of so many patients he will treat each day. 'It's shaming for me and appalling for humanity that a seven-year-old child can have both her legs blown off and just be the next one on the conveyor belt,' he says. 'We can heal her residual legs, and she will not die if we can feed her. But when she's discharged, she will go – if she has family – to a tent where there will be no food. She will have no chance of prosthetic legs at the moment. She will go through life, however long that may be, totally changed.' Groom shows me a photograph of this child in London, where he is based at King's College Hospital, because I have asked to talk to him about his work as a volunteer surgeon. He is a medical expert with years of experience in limb reconstruction. He is also a witness to Gaza – a war zone few can see. Few journalists can enter. Most diplomats are barred. Groom, and a small number of volunteers like him, can tell us about the reality of this war. Now, with Israel intent on full control of Gaza despite international calls for a ceasefire, hearing these accounts feels more urgent than ever. One thing Groom has witnessed is a civilian population trapped without food. Others verify this when I seek them out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies it: 'There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza,' he said last week. This makes it even more important to talk to those who have stood on Gazan soil. 'There were severe acute malnutrition cases diagnosed every day,' Groom says of his most recent work at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis in the southern part of the territory. 'In terms of deaths, the ones who are most at risk were neonates because their mothers, who were starving, could often not produce breast milk.' These babies were most exposed if they were lactose intolerant because there was no baby formula for them and very little for others. Groom visited the malnutrition clinic at Nasser Hospital and found that 60 babies who were lactose intolerant had died from March to the end of May. 'I think the notion that there is no starvation in Gaza is totally fanciful,' he says. 'And I don't know why anyone thinks it's helpful to argue otherwise. The effects of starvation will be so obvious.' Every statement about Gaza is contested. When international media reported on starvation in May, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told Reuters that terrorist group Hamas had caused the hunger by stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas denied this and blamed Israel for the starvation. Those who spoke to this masthead were in no doubt that the hunger, injury and death have grown worse under Israeli rules. The World Food Program says Gaza needs 62,000 tonnes of food a month; it was able to offload only 21,000 tonnes in the two months to the end of July. In the week to July 25, it asked Israeli authorities for permission to send 138 aid convoys to Gaza; only 76 requests were approved. British plastic surgeon Victoria Rose was in Gaza in May, also working at Nasser Hospital. She returned to London on June 4. She and Groom volunteer with charity group Ideals, which has sent medical help to the region since 2009. 'I can't tell you the level of malnutrition – it's shocking,' Rose says. 'You know, the kids are dying of malnutrition. Nobody has any food.' To illustrate this, she mentions the changes in what local staff have asked her to bring each time she arrives for several weeks of work. In December 2023, she says, they asked for mobile phones. In June 2024, they asked for clothing and shoes. In May this year, they needed multivitamins and energy bars. 'I can honestly tell you that it's impossible to operate on people that are this malnourished,' she says. 'None of their wounds heal. They've got zero body fat. They are skin and bone. They have not got the ability to mount an immune response because their immune systems are so depleted. They've got no nutrients and vitamins for normal cell turnover, so they don't repair at all. 'As well as that, you have infection. Everyone has a wound infection because there are no adequate antibiotics, because all aid has been stopped.' As a plastic surgeon, Rose has treated many of the patients who come to the hospital with burns from bomb blasts. But she has seen a change in the injuries over time. Blast wounds were most common in her earlier work, but there were more gunshot wounds after Israel overhauled aid distribution in May and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation took over. 'The trip in May started very similarly to the others, but I'd say the blast injuries were worse, so we were seeing people with bits of them blown off. And I think that that's because 64 per cent of the infrastructure in Gaza has gone, so there are no buildings to shelter you, really. And now they're … tank-bombing tents, people in tents, so you're seeing a lot more direct impact on the body. 'And then in June, the gunshot wounds started again, and they were all from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points.' Most wounds were to the abdomen and groin, some were to limbs. When Rose spoke to patients and interpreters, she heard that some had been shot when arriving for the food and some when they were running away. Did Rose see gunshot wounds that were compatible with the scenario of civilians being shot as they fled? 'Yes,' she says. 'I saw wounds in [the] back of legs.' Another surgeon, Nick Maynard, has been volunteering in Gaza for more than 15 years while also working as a gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals. He told Good Morning Britain, on the ITV network, that he had seen more gunshot wounds on his most recent visit than at any previous point. He returned from Gaza three weeks ago with charity group Medical Aid for Palestinians. 'I saw, on this occasion, multiple gunshot wounds, almost exclusively on young teenage males – some of them as young as 11, 12, 13, 14 – all of whom had been shot at the food distribution points,' he told the network on July 25. 'I saw terrible injuries to the abdomen and the chest, but there was a very clear pattern of injuries, a cluster of injuries to specific body parts on particular days. So one day, for example, we'd see patients coming in with gunshot wounds just to the head and neck. On another day, they'd be coming in with gunshot wounds to the chest or the abdomen. The next day, the legs. On one day, about 12 days ago, we saw four young teenage boys – 13, 14 – all of whom had been shot, specifically, in the testicles.' Rose and Maynard were both cited in a Human Rights Watch report that blamed the increasing casualties on authorities at the aid distribution points. 'States should press Israeli authorities to immediately stop using lethal force as crowd control against Palestinian civilians, lift Israel's unlawful sweeping restrictions on the entry of aid, and for the United States and Israel to suspend this flawed distribution system,' Human Rights Watch said on August 1. Hamas, a listed terrorist group in Australia, has revealed its own atrocities. It took videos of the slaughter of Israeli civilians in the October 7, 2023 attack, and its fighters raped women. It released a video last week showing an emaciated Israeli man, Evyatar David, in a dark tunnel after being held hostage for 666 days. At one point in the video, David was handed a can of food that he said would have to last him two days. Netanyahu cited this as proof that Hamas was perpetrating 'Nazi' abuse. 'While the state of Israel is allowing the entry of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, the terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving our hostages and document them in a cynical and evil manner,' he said. Israel allows entry into Gaza for some surgeons, including those named in this feature, but the restrictions are tight. Groom has worked in Gaza on 45 visits over more than a decade. He used to be able to carry the medical equipment he needed. This changed after October 7, and it tightened again in May this year. He cannot take equipment, and he cannot carry more than about 1000 shekels, the Israeli currency, to help pay local staff. That is about $450. Maynard on July 25 said Israeli authorities had stopped medical teams from taking in baby formula. Groom has a stark way of describing the daily work at Nasser Hospital. 'We would spend the day with mutilated bodies and mangled limbs,' he says. One third of the casualties were children, one third were women and one third were men of all ages. Two operating theatres would work all day: one on orthopaedic surgery, one on plastic surgery, mainly for burns. Loading One patient stands out for Groom. A young boy was taken to the hospital at the end of May after a bomb blast left him badly wounded, and staff thought his arm would have to be amputated. Groom and others saved his arm and discovered who he was – his parents were both doctors at the hospital. The bomb had killed all nine of his siblings in their home. His father was rushed to hospital; he took eight days to die. His mother, a paediatrician, was the only other survivor because she had been working at Nasser Hospital that day. 'It's so horrible,' Groom says. The boy, Adam al-Najjar, 11, has since been evacuated with his mother, Dr Alaa al-Najjar. The BBC reported in June they would be settled in Italy. Adam stands out because he was saved, but he is one of thousands of casualties. 'He is typical of the people we would deal with. None of them were injured by themselves. None of them were injured alone. There were always groups of dead and wounded with them.' Groom worries about the long-term impact of the blast injuries, and the mental health of those who survive. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls Gaza a 'humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions' and his officials estimate that more than 20,000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition. The World Food Program says more than 500,000 people, or about a quarter of Gaza's population, are enduring famine-like conditions. The death toll from the war in Gaza is estimated at 60,000. At Rafah, near the border with Egypt, the Red Cross Field Hospital relies on volunteers such as Rieke Hayes, a physiotherapist from Limerick in Ireland. She has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangladesh, Nepal, North Korea, Iraq, Yemen and Ukraine. 'I've never quite seen the scale of civilian suffering that I have seen in Gaza,' she tells me. 'I've been in conflict zones for years now, about seven years, but it's just so comprehensive, the suffering.' She says this is not just about the shortage of food but the lack of fuel, the injuries, the destruction of housing and the military orders that have forced people to move a dozen times or more. Aerial footage highlighted the destruction this week when news photographers joined flights from Jordan to drop food aid. 'It was just a hellscape,' said ITV News international editor Emma Murphy, who was aboard a flight and spoke to the Columbia Journalism Review. Jordanian officials asked journalists not to film out the windows, apparently nervous that Israel would not allow further flights. Several outlets published the images anyway. Photographs taken on the ground, meanwhile, are contested. Israel has disputed an image of an emaciated Palestinian boy by saying he was suffering a genetic disease rather than starving. Israel has said some journalists in Gaza have staged photographs of starving civilians queuing for food. There is a shortage of primary reportage because so few gain access, limiting the mainstream media coverage as well as the social media posts. This is why it is so important to hear from those who enter Gaza and witness the war. Hayes says she saw a change in casualties after the GHF aid sites began operating towards the end of May. 'Every single day they were open, we had a mass casualty incident, sometimes two,' she says. It began with about 44 patients and rose quickly. One day, there were 244. Loading 'In my first six to seven weeks there, it was mostly blast injuries. Once the food distribution centres opened, it was predominantly bullet wounds that we're seeing in our emergency department. And the thing is, depending on where they hit you, those can result in amputations, really severe fractures, spinal cord injuries.' Two victims were rendered paraplegic; the hospital had only one wheelchair. 'I can't speak to the intention of anyone pulling a trigger. But yes, we had a lot of patients shot in the buttocks, in the back of the legs, and some of them said they had deliberately thrown themselves to the ground, you know, arms behind their heads to show that they're unarmed. And they said they were hit anyway. We did have some of those cases.' There is random death, also, even at a field hospital marked with the Red Cross sign. 'We had a 13-year-old who was in our outpatient department just waiting to be seen by a doctor,' Hayes says. 'A stray bullet came flying in and hit him in the head, and he was transferred to Nasser Hospital. He was in ICU, but he died a month later. To me, it doesn't matter who fired that bullet: at the end of the day, he was just a 13-year-old kid standing inside a hospital facility that you would hope would be safe. 'And there are so many of these stories. It's one after another.' Hayes is due to return to Gaza on Tuesday.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘It's shaming for me and appalling for humanity': The doctors bearing witness to Gaza
A young girl lies on an operating table in a hospital in Gaza. She has lost the use of both of her legs from a bomb blast. A British surgeon, Graeme Groom, is about to amputate both legs to save her life. But he does not know her name because she is one of so many patients he will treat each day. 'It's shaming for me and appalling for humanity that a seven-year-old child can have both her legs blown off and just be the next one on the conveyor belt,' he says. 'We can heal her residual legs, and she will not die if we can feed her. But when she's discharged, she will go – if she has family – to a tent where there will be no food. She will have no chance of prosthetic legs at the moment. She will go through life, however long that may be, totally changed.' Groom shows me a photograph of this child in London, where he is based at King's College Hospital, because I have asked to talk to him about his work as a volunteer surgeon. He is a medical expert with years of experience in limb reconstruction. He is also a witness to Gaza – a war zone few can see. Few journalists can enter. Most diplomats are barred. Groom, and a small number of volunteers like him, can tell us about the reality of this war. Now, with Israel intent on full control of Gaza despite international calls for a ceasefire, hearing these accounts feels more urgent than ever. One thing Groom has witnessed is a civilian population trapped without food. Others verify this when I seek them out. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies it: 'There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza,' he said last week. This makes it even more important to talk to those who have stood on Gazan soil. 'There were severe acute malnutrition cases diagnosed every day,' Groom says of his most recent work at Nasser Hospital, in Khan Younis in the southern part of the territory. 'In terms of deaths, the ones who are most at risk were neonates because their mothers, who were starving, could often not produce breast milk.' These babies were most exposed if they were lactose intolerant because there was no baby formula for them and very little for others. Groom visited the malnutrition clinic at Nasser Hospital and found that 60 babies who were lactose intolerant had died from March to the end of May. 'I think the notion that there is no starvation in Gaza is totally fanciful,' he says. 'And I don't know why anyone thinks it's helpful to argue otherwise. The effects of starvation will be so obvious.' Every statement about Gaza is contested. When international media reported on starvation in May, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer told Reuters that terrorist group Hamas had caused the hunger by stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas denied this and blamed Israel for the starvation. Those who spoke to this masthead were in no doubt that the hunger, injury and death have grown worse under Israeli rules. The World Food Program says Gaza needs 62,000 tonnes of food a month; it was able to offload only 21,000 tonnes in the two months to the end of July. In the week to July 25, it asked Israeli authorities for permission to send 138 aid convoys to Gaza; only 76 requests were approved. British plastic surgeon Victoria Rose was in Gaza in May, also working at Nasser Hospital. She returned to London on June 4. She and Groom volunteer with charity group Ideals, which has sent medical help to the region since 2009. 'I can't tell you the level of malnutrition – it's shocking,' Rose says. 'You know, the kids are dying of malnutrition. Nobody has any food.' To illustrate this, she mentions the changes in what local staff have asked her to bring each time she arrives for several weeks of work. In December 2023, she says, they asked for mobile phones. In June 2024, they asked for clothing and shoes. In May this year, they needed multivitamins and energy bars. 'I can honestly tell you that it's impossible to operate on people that are this malnourished,' she says. 'None of their wounds heal. They've got zero body fat. They are skin and bone. They have not got the ability to mount an immune response because their immune systems are so depleted. They've got no nutrients and vitamins for normal cell turnover, so they don't repair at all. 'As well as that, you have infection. Everyone has a wound infection because there are no adequate antibiotics, because all aid has been stopped.' As a plastic surgeon, Rose has treated many of the patients who come to the hospital with burns from bomb blasts. But she has seen a change in the injuries over time. Blast wounds were most common in her earlier work, but there were more gunshot wounds after Israel overhauled aid distribution in May and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation took over. 'The trip in May started very similarly to the others, but I'd say the blast injuries were worse, so we were seeing people with bits of them blown off. And I think that that's because 64 per cent of the infrastructure in Gaza has gone, so there are no buildings to shelter you, really. And now they're … tank-bombing tents, people in tents, so you're seeing a lot more direct impact on the body. 'And then in June, the gunshot wounds started again, and they were all from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution points.' Most wounds were to the abdomen and groin, some were to limbs. When Rose spoke to patients and interpreters, she heard that some had been shot when arriving for the food and some when they were running away. Did Rose see gunshot wounds that were compatible with the scenario of civilians being shot as they fled? 'Yes,' she says. 'I saw wounds in [the] back of legs.' Another surgeon, Nick Maynard, has been volunteering in Gaza for more than 15 years while also working as a gastrointestinal surgeon at Oxford University Hospitals. He told Good Morning Britain, on the ITV network, that he had seen more gunshot wounds on his most recent visit than at any previous point. He returned from Gaza three weeks ago with charity group Medical Aid for Palestinians. 'I saw, on this occasion, multiple gunshot wounds, almost exclusively on young teenage males – some of them as young as 11, 12, 13, 14 – all of whom had been shot at the food distribution points,' he told the network on July 25. 'I saw terrible injuries to the abdomen and the chest, but there was a very clear pattern of injuries, a cluster of injuries to specific body parts on particular days. So one day, for example, we'd see patients coming in with gunshot wounds just to the head and neck. On another day, they'd be coming in with gunshot wounds to the chest or the abdomen. The next day, the legs. On one day, about 12 days ago, we saw four young teenage boys – 13, 14 – all of whom had been shot, specifically, in the testicles.' Rose and Maynard were both cited in a Human Rights Watch report that blamed the increasing casualties on authorities at the aid distribution points. 'States should press Israeli authorities to immediately stop using lethal force as crowd control against Palestinian civilians, lift Israel's unlawful sweeping restrictions on the entry of aid, and for the United States and Israel to suspend this flawed distribution system,' Human Rights Watch said on August 1. Hamas, a listed terrorist group in Australia, has revealed its own atrocities. It took videos of the slaughter of Israeli civilians in the October 7, 2023 attack, and its fighters raped women. It released a video last week showing an emaciated Israeli man, Evyatar David, in a dark tunnel after being held hostage for 666 days. At one point in the video, David was handed a can of food that he said would have to last him two days. Netanyahu cited this as proof that Hamas was perpetrating 'Nazi' abuse. 'While the state of Israel is allowing the entry of humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, the terrorists of Hamas are deliberately starving our hostages and document them in a cynical and evil manner,' he said. Israel allows entry into Gaza for some surgeons, including those named in this feature, but the restrictions are tight. Groom has worked in Gaza on 45 visits over more than a decade. He used to be able to carry the medical equipment he needed. This changed after October 7, and it tightened again in May this year. He cannot take equipment, and he cannot carry more than about 1000 shekels, the Israeli currency, to help pay local staff. That is about $450. Maynard on July 25 said Israeli authorities had stopped medical teams from taking in baby formula. Groom has a stark way of describing the daily work at Nasser Hospital. 'We would spend the day with mutilated bodies and mangled limbs,' he says. One third of the casualties were children, one third were women and one third were men of all ages. Two operating theatres would work all day: one on orthopaedic surgery, one on plastic surgery, mainly for burns. Loading One patient stands out for Groom. A young boy was taken to the hospital at the end of May after a bomb blast left him badly wounded, and staff thought his arm would have to be amputated. Groom and others saved his arm and discovered who he was – his parents were both doctors at the hospital. The bomb had killed all nine of his siblings in their home. His father was rushed to hospital; he took eight days to die. His mother, a paediatrician, was the only other survivor because she had been working at Nasser Hospital that day. 'It's so horrible,' Groom says. The boy, Adam al-Najjar, 11, has since been evacuated with his mother, Dr Alaa al-Najjar. The BBC reported in June they would be settled in Italy. Adam stands out because he was saved, but he is one of thousands of casualties. 'He is typical of the people we would deal with. None of them were injured by themselves. None of them were injured alone. There were always groups of dead and wounded with them.' Groom worries about the long-term impact of the blast injuries, and the mental health of those who survive. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls Gaza a 'humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions' and his officials estimate that more than 20,000 children have been treated for acute malnutrition. The World Food Program says more than 500,000 people, or about a quarter of Gaza's population, are enduring famine-like conditions. The death toll from the war in Gaza is estimated at 60,000. At Rafah, near the border with Egypt, the Red Cross Field Hospital relies on volunteers such as Rieke Hayes, a physiotherapist from Limerick in Ireland. She has worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangladesh, Nepal, North Korea, Iraq, Yemen and Ukraine. 'I've never quite seen the scale of civilian suffering that I have seen in Gaza,' she tells me. 'I've been in conflict zones for years now, about seven years, but it's just so comprehensive, the suffering.' She says this is not just about the shortage of food but the lack of fuel, the injuries, the destruction of housing and the military orders that have forced people to move a dozen times or more. Aerial footage highlighted the destruction this week when news photographers joined flights from Jordan to drop food aid. 'It was just a hellscape,' said ITV News international editor Emma Murphy, who was aboard a flight and spoke to the Columbia Journalism Review. Jordanian officials asked journalists not to film out the windows, apparently nervous that Israel would not allow further flights. Several outlets published the images anyway. Photographs taken on the ground, meanwhile, are contested. Israel has disputed an image of an emaciated Palestinian boy by saying he was suffering a genetic disease rather than starving. Israel has said some journalists in Gaza have staged photographs of starving civilians queuing for food. There is a shortage of primary reportage because so few gain access, limiting the mainstream media coverage as well as the social media posts. This is why it is so important to hear from those who enter Gaza and witness the war. Hayes says she saw a change in casualties after the GHF aid sites began operating towards the end of May. 'Every single day they were open, we had a mass casualty incident, sometimes two,' she says. It began with about 44 patients and rose quickly. One day, there were 244. Loading 'In my first six to seven weeks there, it was mostly blast injuries. Once the food distribution centres opened, it was predominantly bullet wounds that we're seeing in our emergency department. And the thing is, depending on where they hit you, those can result in amputations, really severe fractures, spinal cord injuries.' Two victims were rendered paraplegic; the hospital had only one wheelchair. 'I can't speak to the intention of anyone pulling a trigger. But yes, we had a lot of patients shot in the buttocks, in the back of the legs, and some of them said they had deliberately thrown themselves to the ground, you know, arms behind their heads to show that they're unarmed. And they said they were hit anyway. We did have some of those cases.' There is random death, also, even at a field hospital marked with the Red Cross sign. 'We had a 13-year-old who was in our outpatient department just waiting to be seen by a doctor,' Hayes says. 'A stray bullet came flying in and hit him in the head, and he was transferred to Nasser Hospital. He was in ICU, but he died a month later. To me, it doesn't matter who fired that bullet: at the end of the day, he was just a 13-year-old kid standing inside a hospital facility that you would hope would be safe. 'And there are so many of these stories. It's one after another.' Hayes is due to return to Gaza on Tuesday.
7NEWS
4 days ago
- 7NEWS
Experimental pill helps patients shed 12 per cent of body weight
Eli Lilly says its experimental GLP-1 pill helped patients lose 12.4 per cent of their body weight after 72 weeks in a late-stage study. Unlike injectable obesity drugs, which are peptides designed to mimic the appetite-controlling GLP-1 hormone, orforglipron is a small molecule pill that is easier to manufacture and package, said Kenneth Custer, president of Lilly's cardiometabolic health division. Lilly, whose injectable GLP-1 Zepbound competes directly with Wegovy, views the once-daily pill as a promising alternative to injections that could be used for early intervention and long-term disease management, Custer said. 'We have pretty big aspirations for how many patients orforglipron could help,' he said, adding that Lilly still expects to file for regulatory approvals of the once-daily pill before the end of the year. In the study of more than 3000 overweight or obese adults with weight-related health issues, but not diabetes, those who received the highest 36 milligram dose of orforglipron on average shed 12.4 per cent of their weight versus 0.9 per cent for those who received a placebo. Patients on a six-milligram dose of the Lilly drug lost 7.8 per cent of their weight. The most common side effects seen in the study were mild-to-moderate gastrointestinal issues. The rate of nausea for high-dose patients was 33.7 per cent, while 24 per cent experienced vomiting, compared with 10.4 per cent and 3.5 per cent, respectively for the placebo group. Just over 10 per cent of the high-dose patients dropped out of the trial due to adverse side effects. No liver safety issues were seen, Lilly said. Custer said orforglipron can be taken without restrictions on food and water. Lilly said orforglipron also lowered markers of heart disease risk, including cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure, across all doses. Lilly has also said it has begun manufacturing the drug in order to stockpile supply ahead of a commercial launch, which should help avoid shortages experienced when early demand for the injectables far outstripped supply. The full results from the Lilly-backed trial will be presented next month at a major European diabetes meeting, the Indianapolis-based drugmaker said.
