Prof Garron Dodd discusses World Health Organisation obesity drug guidance on SBS News

The World Health Organization has published its first set of recommendations regarding medications for weight loss.

The popularity of GLP-1 medications has grown rapidly with almost 500,000 Australians using these drugs for weight loss or medical reasons (AFR 2025).

The WHO has made its first "conditional recommendations" for the long-term use of weight loss drugs to support people living with obesity. Conditional recommendations are made when the WHO is uncertain whether the positive consequences of the recommendation outweigh negative consequences.

Professor Garron Dodd, Head of the Metabolic Neuroscience Research Laboratory in the Dept of Anatomy & Physiology, told SBS News the World Health Organisation’s guideline is "historic” being the first time the WHO has "recognised obesity as a chronic disease requiring lifelong management and not just a failure of an individual's willpower".

Garron also told SBS News that GLP-1 medications are “not a silver bullet” when it comes to treating obesity.

"Obesity is very complex, there's very complex biology that underpins it that GLP-1 [medications] just don't touch. They target symptoms but they don't really target the underlying root causes," he told SBS News.

The next wave of drug development is focusing on trying to target the underlying mechanisms of obesity and diabetes, Garron said.