SPORT AND HEALTH IN THE REPUBLIC OF SLOVENIA IN 2009

Sport and health are often discussed as being related to each other. The Slovenian Olympic Committee, Department of Sport for All, wanted to determine whether the proportion of population engaged in organised sport activities in the region is correlated to the level of sickness in different disease categories. Municipal authorities provided the information on the number of sport clubs and the number of members they included in 2009. The Statistical Yearbook 2009 by the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia supplied the social and demographic information on municipalities in 2009. The Agency for Public Finances offered data on the financing of sports programs in municipalities in Slovenia for 2009. The Institute of Public Health (Health Statistics Yearbook 2009) provided a summary of treatments for some diseases at the primary level as per diagnosis in accordance with the international ICD-10 classification. Results show that organized sports indeed decrease the level of some health conditions (such as respiratory). The proportion of public funds per member in sport societies is correlated with occurrences of digestive diseases, symptoms and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings not elsewhere classified. Higher wages for employees in such clubs also impact on occurrences of respiratory disease, musculoskeletal diseases, gastrointestinal diseases and injury- and poisoning-related problems due to external causes. These results support the view that sports clubs act as a natural pharmacy. Increased funding for sports clubs would probably lead to an improvement in national health and save resources now spent on treatments