A group of over 200 doctors and other health professionals is launching a rival body to Public Health England, claiming not enough is being done to combat obesity, poor diet, and medical misinformation.
Public Health Collaboration (PHC) said that its “grassroots army” of public, patients and can clean up the current “health and medical misinformation mess” which has contributed to the UK’s obesity epidemic among other long-term issues. The charity’s chair Dr Aseem Malhotra, a London-based cardiologist who co-founded Action on Sugar, said the problem has become so acute that the NHS is no longer able to cope with the demand placed on it due to millions of people suffering long-term chronic ill health.
He told i: “What distinguishes us from other health charities is that we do not take any corporate sponsorship – it is funded by the public, for the public. We are here to clean up and take action against the health and medical misinformation mess that is destroying people’s lives.
“The fact that you have two main industries – food and pharma – that mislead for profit and are the major root of our healthcare crisis putting demand on the NHS to the point where the NHS is broken in my view.
“We want to inform people to make healthy decisions for themselves, but the bigger picture is also understanding the wider determinants of health and taking action to make structural changes to have an impact on population health.