OdishaPlus Bureau
More than 59 percent of over one million residents in Bhubaneswar are physically inactive, while only 16 percent of the population practice yoga, a recent study has revealed. The research, funded by Odisha Mining Corporation (OMC), also said that less than one-third of the population walk for ten minutes a day.
“The physical activity pattern among the city residents has been found to be very poor with 59.2 percent of the population reporting that they were not active and didn’t have any intention of being more active in the future,” says the study which was conducted by Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS) and SUM Hospital.
According to the World Health Organisation, physical inactivity is one of the major risk factors for rapidly escalating non-communicable diseases (NCDs) with an increase in healthcare costs.”Around 10 percent of those interviewed said that they suffered from NCDs like diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases,” E Venkata Rao, who headed the first of its kind study in Odisha, said.
Physical inactivity has been found to be the fourth leading cause of global mortality. NCDs account for nearly 50 percent of all deaths in India though they are largely preventable if the risk factors involved in it are reigned in,” Rao said, adding that rural communities have been found to be more physically active than their urban counterparts.