Doctors’ lifestyles vital for SA’s health – global expert

Abstract

Overweight, smoking doctors ‘make terrible counselors’, says Dr Derek Yach, the South African former tobacco-control activist who rose to lead the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and its strategy on diet and physical activity.
He says research shows that doctors who smoke and present as overweight or obese are ‘far less likely’ to counsel their patients or become effective disease prevention agents, let alone engage in any public discourse on legislative health measures.