On April 6th, World Phys­i­cal Ac­tiv­i­ty Day (World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion) and the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Sport for De­vel­op­ment and Peace (UN­ESCO) recog­nised the con­tin­ued im­por­tance of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty as key el­e­ments to­wards achiev­ing the UN Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals 2030. Phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and sport pro­vide not on­ly phys­i­cal but al­so so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits to par­tic­i­pants notwith­stand­ing age, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, re­li­gion and so­cial class.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tre for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC) mod­er­ate to in­tense aer­o­bic ac­tiv­i­ty such as brisk walk­ing can re­sult in sev­er­al ben­e­fits:

· Im­prove­ment in brain health

· Weight man­age­ment

· Re­duc­ing dis­ease

· Strength­en­ing of bones and mus­cles

· Im­prove­ment in abil­i­ty to do every­day ac­tiv­i­ties

Ac­cord­ing to a 2018 In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) re­port, the spend­ing by Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean gov­ern­ment on sport amounts to .1% of GDP ex­clud­ing elite ath­letes fund­ing. There­fore, Sport for De­vel­op­ment suf­fers im­mense­ly.

The re­port stat­ed that while the re­gion is pro­duces some of the finest elite ath­letes, the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty lev­el is very wor­ry­ing es­pe­cial­ly when the pop­u­la­tion is dis­ag­gre­gat­ed by var­i­ous de­mo­graph­ic fac­tors such as age, eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der, so­cial class etc. For in­stance, be­tween the ages 11 and 17, 9 out of 10 ado­les­cents did not meet the uni­ver­sal stan­dard of 60 min­utes of mod­er­ate to vig­or­ous ac­tiv­i­ty per day.

Lo­cal­ly, phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty among the ado­les­cent pop­u­la­tion should not be tak­en like­ly by par­ents/guardians, schools and the state. Phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty is com­pound­ed by poor eat­ing habits- heavy con­sump­tion of sug­ar based and fast foods- and seden­tary lifestyles. If al­lowed to de­vel­op unchecked, the al­ready ex­ist­ing prob­lems of hy­per­ten­sion, type 2 di­a­betes and obe­si­ty among the old­er pop­u­la­tion can be­come an alarm­ing con­cern among the younger pop­u­la­tion. The costs to so­ci­ety will not on­ly be in terms of health but al­so eco­nom­i­cal­ly with re­gards to for­gone pro­duc­tive ex­pen­di­ture.

The cur­rent health pro­to­col mea­sures brought about to curb the trans­mis­sion of the COVID-19 virus can have a fur­ther damp­en­ing ef­fect on phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty es­pe­cial­ly among ado­les­cents and young adults. At the mo­ment there is ban on recre­ation­al team sports and with no face-to-face class­es school­ing, stu­dents do not have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in or­gan­ised phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and school sport.

How­ev­er, all is not lost as par­tic­i­pa­tion in ac­tiv­i­ties such as walk­ing, run­ning, cy­cling and swim­ming still of­fer great op­por­tu­ni­ties for achiev­ing the mul­ti-faceted ben­e­fits of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. For in­stance, per­sons can make walk­ing and run­ning com­pet­i­tive by reg­is­ter­ing for any of sev­er­al vir­tu­al events and or en­gage in non-com­pet­i­tive fam­i­ly fun ac­tiv­i­ties such as kite fly­ing. At the end of the day the onus falls up­on par­ents/guardians, sport clubs and so­cial groups to en­gage cre­ative­ly in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty de­spite the cur­rent pan­dem­ic. Fail­ure to do so may re­sult in mount­ing un­de­sir­able phys­i­cal, so­cial and men­tal is­sues.