A recent study led by researchers from the World Health Organisation (WHO), published in the scientific journal The Lancet, suggests that policies to increase physical activity on a global scale need to be made a priority and scaled up urgently. According to the study, which looked at inactivity trends among adults (18+) worldwide from 2001 to 2016, progress towards achieving the global target of a 10 percent relative reduction of insufficient physical activity by 2025 has been too slow and if the current trends continue unchanged, this target will not be met. For the purposes of the study, insufficient physical activity was defined as adults not meeting the WHO recommendations of at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity per week, or any equivalent combination of the two.
The researchers examined data on self-reported activity levels in adults from 358 population-based surveys in 168 countries, including 1.9 million participants overall, representing 96 percent of the world's population.
According to the scientists' estimates, there has been little progress between 2001 and 2016. The levels of insufficient activity in this time-frame have been stable at 28.5 percent - the study indicates that the change between the 2001 and the 2016 data was “not significant.” The highest prevalence of insufficient physical activity in 2016 was found in Latin America and the Caribbean (39.1 percent), while the lowest levels were in Oceania (16.3 percent). High-income countries showed the highest prevalence of inactivity in 2016 (36.8 percent), and the levels of insufficient activity have actually increased in these countries - by more than 5 percent - between 2001 and 2016, as the percentage in 2001 was of 31.6 percent.
The prevalence of insufficient physical activity in high-income countries in 2016 was more than double the prevalence in low-income countries, where it stood at 16.2 percent. The study also found that in 2016 women were less active than men in all regions of the world, apart from East and Southeast Asia.
Based on their findings, scientists said that more than a quarter of all world's adults was not getting enough physical activity in 2016. This puts more than 1.4 billion adults at risk of developing or exacerbating diseases connected with inactivity, such as cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, dementia, and some types of cancer.
