Portuguese hospital turns to zoo for help with overweight patients

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2004

LISBON (AFP) — A cash-strapped hospital in the Portuguese capital has asked a local zoo to loan X-ray equipment usually used on elephants so it can treat overweight patients.

A spokesman for the Egas Moniz hospital told the weekly newspaper Tal e Qual that the X-ray machines which it owns cannot bear people who weigh more than 140 kilograms (300 pounds) so doctors turned to the Lisbon zoo for help when it needed to treat an extremely overweight woman last year.

But the zoo was not able to offer assistance as its machine, which is used on lions, tigers and bears as well as elephants, had been broken for over two years.

"We only got a new machine recently," a zoo spokesman told the paper.

Obesity has been gradually rising in Portugal as dietary habits...