THE cost to the NHS in Oxfordshire of dealing with illnesses associated with obesity tops £1m each year, according to a new report.

For the first time a price has been put on how much it costs to treat people who get ill because they are dangerously overweight, with conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

On Thursday Dr Jonathan McWilliam, the county’s health director, released his fifth annual public health report.

In it he explains what the main health concerns and priorities for Oxfordshire are, and how health bosses should tackle them.

Each year Dr McWilliam has warned of the threat of the rising tide of obesity to Oxfordshire.

Dr McWilliam said: “The fight against obesity is the most important lifestyle challenge for the population of Oxfordshire.

“We are doing well as a county. However, we can do more to tackle this problem,” he added.

One in five Oxfordshire adults and one in three Oxfordshire children are either overweight or obese.

Obesity is when a person is carrying too much body fat for their height and sex, and a person is considered obese if they have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more.

Dr McWilliam warned that being obese reduces lifespan by about nine years, and can increase the risk of getting diabetes up to seven times for women and up to five times in obese men.

And 10 per cent of all Oxfordshire cancer deaths among non-smokers are linked to being dangerously overweight.

Free workshops called Mind Exercise Nutrition Do It (Mend), designed to educate parents and children about healthy living and exercise, have been rolled out in places such as Blackbird Leys and Barton in an attempt to drive down obesity.

Health bosses also paid £500,000 for 600 of the county’s most dangerously overweight adults to embark on the Oxfordshire Weightloss Lifestyle Service (Owls) through a free referral from their GP. Both schemes have been hailed a success by those who have signed up to them.

Kevin Pickworth, from Didcot, was 20 stone and, at 5ft 10ins tall, severely overweight when he joined the Owls programme.

Now he has lost three stone and no longer suffers the panic attacks he endured because of his weight.

He said: “I think there’s lots of help out there for people who want to find it. If it wasn’t for the service I’d be dead.”

VITAL STATISTICS In Oxfordshire, just 44 per cent of school children take more than three hours regular exercise a week compared to a national average of 55 per cent.

Around 15 per cent of 11-year-olds in Oxfordshire are classed as obese compared to 18.7 per cent elsewhere in the country.

The national number of recorded hospital admissions related to obesity rose by more than 30 per cent in 2010, according to a report from The NHS Information Centre.

In 2009 almost a quarter of adults, 22 per cent of men and 24 per cent of women, in England were classified as obese.