Sydney - A patient too fat to fit in an ambulance or a standard medivac aircraft was taken to hospital in far-north Queensland in a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane, news reports said Monday.

The 240-kilogramme woman was airlifted from Mount Isa to Townsville Hospital last week in the four-engine turboprop Hercules because she was too heavy for an ambulance or the standard Royal Flying Doctor Service twin-engine Saab aircraft.

"It's not just the expense though," AMA spokesman Ross Cartmill "There's got to be a thorough attempt at educating the community on the ramifications of being overweight, obviously not just what goes wrong when you have to have surgery, but what's going wrong every day of their lives."

In the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics report, 2 million more adults are classified as overweight or obese than in 1995. Over 7.4 million adults - 54 per cent of the adult population - were classified as overweight or obese compared with the 1995 figure of 45 per cent.

Sports stadiums have widened their seats, funeral parlours have installed hoists and jumbo ambulances have been rolled out to deal with increasing numbers of sumo-style Australians. (dpa)