SINCE 2006, York Hospital has had to spend more than half a million pounds on “super-sized” furniture for obese patients.

It has paid out more than £50,000 for 42 specialist beds that can bear a weight of up to 70 stone. More money has gone on special operating tables and trolleys, reinforced walking frames, chairs, hoists and commodes.

If anything illustrates the scale of the obesity epidemic we are experiencing, it is this.

“These figures do go to show the enormous strain the rise in obesity levels is having on the NHS,” said York councillor Madeleine Kirk, who sits on the hospital’s board of governors.

There may be those tempted to snigger at the thought of people so overweight they need special beds and chairs in hospital.

But obesity is a serious medical condition, that demands to be dealt with accordingly.

Only recently, NHS chiefs in North Yorkshire revealed it was costing the health service in the region a staggering £186 million every year.

It is easy to blame overweight people themselves.

But that is far too easy, and totally unfair.

As Professor Paul Gately, an expert in obesity and technical director of a weight loss camp in Leeds, explained in this newspaper last week, being overweight is not about lack of willpower.

Today’s obesity epidemic is the result of changes in society which have led to sedentary lifestyles and an over-abundance of easily-available food.

NHS bosses in the county last week unveiled a long-term strategy to try to tackle obesity. Much of it quite rightly focuses on efforts to encourage a healthier lifestyle.

But such an approach will take time to work.

In the meantime, overweight patients have the right to expect the same standard of treatment that everybody else gets.

York Hospital says it needs the specialist equipment to treat obese patients properly.

In which case, it was absolutely right to spend the money it did.