Four severely overweight patients have had to stay months longer than they needed to at Middlemore Hospital because they are too big to be sent anywhere else.
A spinal patient in his 50s, has finally found a community rehabilitation facility to take him after having to say in hospital for more than eight months.
He was turned down by 18 others.
The Counties-Manukau DHB says community units are not able to take some morbidly obese patients because they don't have the equipment, staff or space to care for them.
The DHB says its services are stretched because of the extra demands of high obesity in its population and it's asking the government to do more.
RNZ Auckland reporter Rowan Quinn asked the DHB's chief medical officer, Gloria Johnson, about the situation of the stranded patients.
