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Provision of proper conditions for the creation of healthy life style is a priority of the state policy in this country with special attention given to the development of the mass physical culture and sports. The present paper contains information on the proportion of the population of the Russian Federation regularly engaged in physical culture and sports, provision of necessary sport facilities, and budgetary expenditures for the purpose in different constituent entities of the country. Public satisfaction with the conditions available for mass physical education and sports is discussed. Taking into account the low average life expectancy of the country's population and the increasing morbidity and traumaticity rates among the younger generation, it appears impossible to address the global challenge of improving the health of the nation without promotion of mass physical culture and sports and renewal of interest in these activities among the general population.

The approach of a country to persons with limited physical abilities is an important component of country's social-and-cultural policy. Blindness is a most severe variety of health disorders leading to social defect and social insufficiency. The role of adaptive physical culture is important within the system of the social-and-medical rehabilitation of the blind because the sedentary life mode has a negative effect on organisms of the disabled due to vision. Sports is not only a method for correcting the general somatic condition, but it is also an important social-and-physiological factor that enables the blind to comprehend their abilities as an example for others. As for our country, the information about the modern sports activities among the disabled due to vision is absolutely insufficient for the public at large. An analysis of results of examination (conducted by using the computer data base of the International Blind Sportsmen Association--IBSA) of 2386 blind and impaired vision sportsmen is presented in the paper. Data about sport disciplines and types of ophthalmic pathologies encountered among the high-class blind and impaired vision athletes from different world countries are described. The above data can be helpful in elaborating the rehabilitation programs for persons with severe disorders of the organ of vision to be used in rehabilitation centers, sport federations and clubs of the disabled as well as in other institutions dealing with rehabilitation of the disabled due to vision in our country.