Over 51 pc urban adults exercise less than 150 min/week: ICMR

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 5

More than half of urban Indian adults are putting in less than 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, an ICMR survey on the national non-communicable disease (NCD) estimates has shown.

Rural India is fitter than urban India when measured on most indicators of health but villagers are fast catching up with city counterparts on high blood-pressure levels.

The National NCD Monitoring Survey was done to generate India-level estimates of key NCD indicators identified in the national NCD monitoring framework and shows the prevalence of risk factors among adults aged 18 to 69 years.

Published on Thursday, the survey says 51.7 per cent urban adults are physically inactive compared to 36.1 pc rural adults.

Overall prevalence of overweight and obesity among adults is 26.1 per cent.

A higher percentage of adults in urban areas (42.5 pc) were found overweight as against 18 per cent in rural India.

While 11.2 per cent of city people were obese, the corresponding percentage among rural adults was 3.7 per cent.

Survey results for central obesity (defined as waist circumference more than 90 cm for males and over 80 cm for females) are also interesting with the urban-rural divide intact.

Against 48.2 per cent centrally obese urban adults, there are 24.2 per cent centrally obese rural adults.

Gender differential for this indicator is marked with central obesity found among 24.4 per cent men and 40.7 per cent women.

The survey also showed men consuming higher salt (8.9 grams a day as against WHO mandates 5 grams a day) and a higher proportion of men (69.7 per cent) than women (58.4 per cent) thought lowering salt consumption was important.

“Higher prevalence of raised blood pressure was found in 34 per cent urban respondents and 25.7 per cent rural respondents while raised blood glucose was seen in 14.4 per cent urban and 6.9 per cent rural Indians,” the survey shows.

The findings say that two fifth (40.2 per cent) adults aged 18 to 69 years had clustering of more than or equal to three risk factors (daily tobacco use, inadequate fruits or vegetable intake, insufficient physical activity, overweight, raised blood pressure and raised fasting blood glucose).

Majority (98.4 per cent) of adults aged between 18-69 years consumed inadequate fruits and vegetables (less than the mandated five servings a day).

ABOUT THE SURVEY

In total, 10,659 adults aged 18 to 69 years participated in the survey of which 5,048 (47.4 per cent) were from urban and 5,611 (52.6 per cent) adults belonged to rural areas.

The mean age of participants was 40 years. Nearly 85.7 per cent respondents provided spot urine samples to test NCD risk factors.

The burden

In India, mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) accounted to 65 per cent of total deaths in 2019.