{"id":47169,"date":"2026-10-03T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T13:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=47169"},"modified":"2026-10-03T15:30:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T13:30:52","slug":"crackdown-on-illegal-weight-loss-drugs-leaves-patients-in-sa-stranded","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/crackdown-on-illegal-weight-loss-drugs-leaves-patients-in-sa-stranded\/","title":{"rendered":"Crackdown on illegal weight-loss drugs leaves patients in SA stranded"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"x_divRplyFwdMsg\"><\/div>\n<div>Recent regulatory and legal action against pharmacies illegally compounding GLP-1 weight-loss medicines has affected up to 300 000 South Africans (SA).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Health management company, Obiflex, says with the compounded route now closed, affected patients face a tough choice; to seek out other unregulated and potentially unsafe sources, or turn to a registered, doctor-prescribed alternative that many say they cannot afford.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u201cThere are hundreds of thousands of South Africans, wanting to go on this weight-loss journey but they just simply can\u2019t afford the R4 000 to R6 000 ($240.68 to $373.86).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>One of the things that can happen when you buy these illicit medicines, is you literally get poisoned and end up in hospital,\u201d says Chief Executive Officer of Obiflex, Shaun Barns.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He says the second issue is the dosages on the labels of the medicines.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\u201cThe dosages can be off by up to 40% so you can sometimes be taking a dose of a medicine, and when you\u2019re using it it\u2019s actually completely different dose, which obviously isn\u2019t good when it comes to scheduled medicines,\u201d he adds.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;SABC&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":46811,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-47169","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Barns says the second issue is the dosages on the labels of the medicines.","published_date":"","news_description":"Barns says the second issue is the dosages on the labels of the medicines.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47170,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/47169\/revisions\/47170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=47169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}