KUWAIT: Forty percent of citizens of both sexes in Kuwait practice physical exercise, a Ministry of Health official said, pointing out that the decline in the ratio is attributed to personal, social and environmental obstacles.

Efforts are needed to create an integrated program to promote health including environmental modifications in order to surpass the issue of high temperatures and provide suitable places for physical activity, said Dr Abeer Al-Bahou, Director of Health Promotion Department.

She called for organizing an awareness campaign involving all segments of society to show the importance of physical activity and its positive reverberation on health with a plan to stimulate exercise between the various age groups starting with schools.

She added that the Health Promotion Department defined physical activity as any bodily movement performed by skeletal muscle and requires spending amount of energy, pointing out that her department has completed its study on the basic obstacles on the lack of exercise by citizens, especially the adult. She pointed out that scientific studies have shown that the performance of regular physical activity has a positive effect in the prevention of many chronic non-communicable diseases and that it reduces the risk of premature death.

She noted that research conducted in the Gulf Arab states and various countries of the world showed a low level of physical activity in most adults, arguing that the environmental model of health promotion is one of the most commonly used models to study the barriers to doing this activity. She said that the study prepared by her department aims to determine the level of physical activity among Kuwaiti adults and the obstacles they face, stressing reliance on the latest census of the State of Kuwait which estimated number of adult citizens at about 530,000. - KUNA