Malta has slipped down a European league table on health after a huge drop in the share of people reporting that they exercise regularly and eat healthily.

The local score on health – which is part of a wider EU index on gender equality that has just been published – declined the most out of all EU member states over a span of a year, from second to 13th place.

This drop is largely due to data on physical activity and fruit or vegetable consumption from the European Health Interview Survey, which is carried out every five years.

In the 2014/15 survey, 42.7% of women and 45.1% of men reported that they engaged in physical activity for at least 150 minutes a week or consumed at least five portions of fruit and vegetables per day.

But the survey carried out five years later, between November 2019 and March 2020, found that this share dropped to 21.7% for women and 21.9% for men.

The overall health score for Malta was put at 87.8 points – slightly less than the EU average of 88.7.

It was built on several measures, including how one perceives their health, life expectancy at birth, smoking and harmful drinking, and access to medical and dental services.

Malta did slightly better when it comes to smoking and drinking.

According to this year’s index, 73.5% of women and 58.5% of men in the country do not smoke or engage in heavy drinking, compared to 70% of women and 56.3% of men in the previous index.

Therefore, the more recent data shows that fewer women and men smoke or engage in harmful drinking in the country, however, the change is modest.

Seventy-three per cent of women and 58 per cent of men in Malta do not smoke or engage in heavy drinking.

Progress in gender equality

The health score forms part of an annual gender index published by the EU’s centre on gender equality, which put Malta in 13th place out of 27 countries.

The gender equality index measures the progress of gender equality over time, in different aspects of life.

The index gives each member state a score from 1 to 100, based on the gaps between women and men and levels of achievement in work, money, knowledge, power and health among others.

Malta received a total of 65.6 points, compared to the European average of 68.6.

The data for this year’s index is mostly from 2020 and the UK has not been included. Between 2010 and 2020, Malta’s score increased by 11.2 points, mainly due to significant improvement in the domain of work and time.

This is measured through mean earnings and net income, at-risk-of-poverty percentages, and income distribution among others, while care of relatives, household chores, sporting and leisure activities and voluntary and charitable events are used to compute the island’s score when it comes to the domain of time.

Over a decade, Malta’s progress has been one of the biggest, resulting in a rise in ranking by five places.

However, comparing 2010 and 2020 data, Malta’s score decreased by 0.2 points in the domain of knowledge, indicating stagnation. As a result, the island’s rank in this domain dropped by three places, now standing at ninth place with a score of 65.2 points.