HEALTH: Move Your Body!

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 6 2002 (IPS) - The director-general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Gro Harlem Brundtland, launched the activities for World Health Day – celebrated Sunday – in Brazil, calling on people worldwide to engage in physical activity to prevent disease.

A half-hour walk a day goes a long way towards preventing cardiovascular problems, diabetes and obesity, which kill millions of people throughout the world every year, Brundtland said in Sao Paulo Friday.

World Health Day will be commemorated Sunday under the slogan “Move for Health”. The main events will take place this year in Sao Paulo – Brazil’s largest city and the birthplace of the movement that inspired the WHO-sponsored campaign against a sedentary lifestyle, “Agita Mundo” or “Shake the World”.

Sunday will be a day of hiking, dancing, sports and other activities aimed at getting the body moving in 206 events held in 59 countries, in the spirit promoted by “Agita Sao Paul” (Shake Sao Paulo), a programme designed by the Sao Caetano do Sul Centre of Studies on Physical Aptitude (CELAFISCS).

“Agita Sao Paulo”, launched in March 1996, is the product of studies carried out in 1995 in conjunction with a number of international institutions and research centres, which blamed the sedentary lifestyle for a number of woes, CELAFISCS expert Luis Carlos de Oliveira told IPS.

The initiative, implemented on the request of the state of Sao Paulo Secretariat of Health, was initially titled “Exercise is Health”, after which it was renamed “Agita Sao Paulo” on the recommendation of public relations experts, who suggested a catchier, more agile slogan.

The programme’s success was immediate. Groups began to be set up around the country, and 205 official and non-governmental institutions, companies and associations joined the movement, “assuming the commitment to disseminate the message throughout society,” said Oliveira, a physical education teacher.

The WHO later recognised the movement as a best practice in promoting health, that could serve as an example for the world.

Activities like “Agita Mundo” and “Agita Brazil” thus emerged throughout the country, and in other nations, sponsored by local and national governments.

In Brazil, the most enthusiastic reception has been seen among the elderly, who have created neighbourhood “walking groups”, said Oliveira, technical adviser to “Agita Sao Paulo” and “Agita Brazil”.

The elderly are learning that they gain motivation and get sick less after engaging in physical activity, said the expert.

CELAFISCS, which groups together doctors, physical education instructors, therapists and nutritionists, began its activities in research and organising competitive sports 28 years ago, eventually moving on to organising public health initiatives.

“Agita Sao Paulo” is based on the idea that a sedentary lifestyle is “the number one enemy of health in the world,” affecting 70 percent of the population.

A lifestyle without physical activity and with a poor diet is responsible for 54 percent of the risk of heart attacks and half of the deaths caused by stroke, say the movement’s organisers.

Osteoporosis, high blood pressure, depression, a higher rate of colon cancer, obesity and diabetes are all related to a sedentary lifestyle, and together absorb 70 percent of health spending in developing as well as industrialised nations, they note.

Half an hour of physical activity a day greatly reduces the risk of such diseases.

Physical activity does not demand expensive equipment or great amounts of free time, but can be incorporated without changing one’s day-to-day routine, by walking or riding a bike to work, school or errands, or by engaging in sports and other activities in one’s free time, Oliveira pointed out.

The WHO rebuts the arguments of experts who say health woes arising from a sedentary lifestyle are problems of rich countries.

Between 60 and 85 percent of adults worldwide, in both rich and poor countries, exercise less than they should, according to the WHO. For example, 70 percent of the residents of Sao Paulo are overly sedentary.

Technological progress and machines have freed millions of people from heavy labour, but have led them to sedentary lifestyles, which is one of the major public health problems today, said Brundtland.

This year, the WHO is putting priority on promoting physical activity as a preventive measure that could avoid two million deaths a year.