THE world’s heaviest man — who weighs in at a staggering 960 pounds (435 kg) — underwent fat reduction surgery yesterday.

    A team of seven staff helped hoist Andres Moreno out of bed and onto a special reinforced stretcher to transport him from his home in Obregon City to a Guadalajara hospital for the gastric bypass yesterday.

    The 37-year-old had become bedbound over recent years due to his weight and also suffers from a variety of serious illnesses.

    Medics are expected to remove the majority of Moreno’s stomach, around 70 percent, and reroute a lengthy portion of his small intestine at the Mexico Gastric Bypass unit in the Arboledas Hospital.

    The procedure is used in morbidly obese patients to reduce meal quantities and the absorption of calories from food in a bid to make them lose weight.

    But the surgery poses a real risk to Moreno’s life as doctors have rarely carried out such an operation, which must be done under anesthetic, on someone of his size.

    Surgeon Jose Castaneda admitted his weight even posed a difficulty to equipment such as the operating table which had never carried so much before.

    But, just a few hours before he was due to go under the knife, Moreno was optimistic about his chances and was hopeful for a “second chance” at a normal life.

    “I start a journey that must carry me to a new phase of life, a new chapter and I hope to a new book altogether, different and far from the prison that my own body has become,” Fox News Latino reported.

    Moreno said he had always been on the large side.

    He was born weighing a hefty 5.9 kg and by the age of 10 was already tipping the scales at 120 kg. A healthy 10-year-old typically weighs anywhere between 26 to 45 kg.

    Moreno added that he now just wanted to overcome the surgery to “be someone with a normal body.” The Director of Mexico Gastric Bypass board, Judith Tavares, added, “Andres is like a vase that has suffered several blows and we do not know at what point it can shatter.”

    Moreno is the second Mexican to claim the title of fattest man after the Guinness World Record awarded Manuel Uribe with the title of heaviest man alive in 2006.(SD-Agencies)