Ozempic shortages have European countries exploring bans on use of popular drug for weight loss

Bel­gium banned the use of No­vo Nordisk’s di­a­betes drug Ozem­pic for weight loss this week, and Ger­many is con­sid­er­ing a sim­i­lar ac­tion amid short­ages of the drug for di­a­bet­ic pa­tients.

Bel­gium an­nounced the ban in the coun­try’s Of­fi­cial Gazette on Tues­day as a roy­al de­cree, Reuters re­port­ed. Bel­gium first an­nounced its plans to in­sti­tute a ban on Ozem­pic for weight loss in Oc­to­ber, with the coun­try’s health min­is­ter say­ing that sim­ply telling doc­tors not to pre­scribe it out­side of its ap­proved use hasn’t worked. The moves fol­low a sim­i­lar one in the UK, where health au­thor­i­ties banned the use of Ozem­pic for weight loss in Ju­ly. We­govy, No­vo’s prod­uct that us­es the same ac­tive in­gre­di­ent, launched for weight loss in the UK in Sep­tem­ber.

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