A health district in south-western New South Wales believes it is the first in the state to ban the sale of sugary drinks in its facilities.

The Murrumbidgee Local Health District (MLHD) is based in Wagga Wagga, serving almost 241,000 residents and operating 31 hospitals in the NSW Riverina.

MLHD manager of health promotion Christine May said the ban was instigated last week by the district's chief executive, Jill Ludford, who issued a directive to all facility managers to cease the sale of sugar-sweetened drinks.

"Really it's a small but significant step towards reducing the amount of soft drink, the over-consumption of soft drink, which we have strong evidence for being a negative health impact," Ms May said.

"It role models to the community that we're serious about this, that we acknowledge that [being] overweight and obese is a serious problem for members of our community."

Ms May said Australia-wide, about 66 per cent of Australians were considered to have an unhealthy or very unhealthy weight range.

In 2014, the New South Wales Government estimated obesity had cost the state $19b in 2008, including financial costs and indirect costs due to lost wellbeing.

"I hope it will reduce the amount of soft drink that the population as a whole is drinking in our area," Ms May said.

"We believe our health service is the first to have a chief executive take such a step, but I do expect others will follow suit."

Ms May said the top recommendation to come out of a recent study into obesity by Sydney University was to reduce the sale of soft drink.

"I know NSW Health is interested in a whole of government approach on this, so hopefully further along we'll have those changes across the board," she said.

"There will be plenty of options for people remaining, and they will still be able to drink water and have diet soft drinks for example.

"It's just the sugary-sweetened drinks, the ones with the really high energy where we know that the over-consumption can contribute to an individual's risk of being overweight, and in turn can impact on other chronic diseases, for example diabetes."

Soft drink ban gains support of regional health academic

Charles Sturt University senior lecturer in biomedical science Dr Herbert Jelinek recently renewed his calls for Australian governments to take preventative action to curb the country's diabetes epidemic.

Dr Jelinek said the World Health Organisation's first global report on diabetes had found the number of people living with diabetes had increased from 108 million in 1980 to 442 million adults in 2014.

He said projects done in 1997 suggested 221 million people would have diabetes by 2010.

Dr Jelinek is supportive of the Murrumbidgee Local Health District initiative.

"I think it certainly helps, because if it's not there ... people, their access is not as easy," he said.

Dr Jelinek said education about the dangers of sugar was the key.

"If we think of the cigarette campaign, or the AIDs, the HIV campaign, that was very, very intense across all media and that did show a certain effect," he said.

"We don't see the same for sugar, for diabetes.

"I think it needs to be on the TV continuously, really saturate the population about the dangers, so their behaviour will slowly, slowly change.

"If you're smoking on the street, you might well get a look and somebody might say something to you," Dr Jelinek said.

"[But] if you're having a triple ice cream with further cream and hundreds and thousands on top, somebody says to you, 'That looks yummy'."