The Health Ministry ordered the health funds not to prescribe the popular drug Ozempic for the treatment of obesity. "You should not continue to order the use of Ozempic for the indication of treating obesity, which is not the purpose it is registered for," wrote Eli Marom, deputy director of the Pharmacy Division at the Health Ministry (the position of Director of the Division has not been filled for almost two years), on Wednesday in a letter to the managers of the health insurance funds.
Diabetics will be able to continue receiving prescriptions for Ozempic, he said.
The letter also said that: "Patients who are being treated with the Ozempic preparation should be referred to the attending physician for a prescription for obesity treatment, in order to change the treatment to a registered preparation."
The background for the decision is the introduction of another drug, Wegovy, which will cost the patients much more. Ozempic is intended for diabetics and has also entered the medical services basket. However, both drugs are not in the basket for obesity. Until it was added to the basket, an Ozempic injection was given in the supplementary insurances of the health funds.
The Wegovy injection produced by Novo-Nordisk (the same manufacturer of Ozempic) recently arrived in pharmacies in Israel. It contains the exact same active ingredient as the Ozempic, Semaglutide, but in a dose almost two and a half times higher (2.4 mg compared to 1 mg). Wegovy, unlike Ozempic, is registered in Israel as a treatment for weight loss.
Wegovy, like Ozempic, is a once-weekly, self-injectable subcutaneous injection. In order to reach the recommended and fixed dose of Wegovy, which is 2.4 mg once a week, four months of gradual adaptation to the drug (compared to two months with Ozempic) must be achieved by gradually increasing the dose. The goal is to avoid potential side effects – mainly nausea, diarrhea or constipation, gas, heartburn and abdominal discomfort, which usually tend to pass gradually.
"Until this letter, in the State of Israel there were two treatments for obesity. Saxenda, which is a registered drug that is given once a day, and Ozeampic, which is intended for diabetics but also causes weight loss and is administered for the treatment of obesity," according to Professor Shlomo Vinker, head of the medicine division at Leumit Health Services.
"When a doctor gives a treatment that is not on the registered label, he declares that the patient has exhausted the existing treatments. Until today, the treatment with Saxenda should have been exhausted. Since this is a privately requested drug, we have no idea what the number of users is, but it is probably tens of thousands. This directive in fact, says that a new medicine for the treatment of obesity, Wegovy, has been registered, and from the moment this medicine is registered, it is not possible to give the treatment with Ozempic without exhausting the treatment with Wegoby," he added.
"This is significant because we have thousands of patients in Israel who receive this medicine and tomorrow they won't be able to receive it and will have to switch to receive Wegovy treatment. The entire market that has been up to today a lot of patients will have to switch to Wegovy with the wave of a letter alone. It is actually the same substance, but Wegovy costs a lot more."