Morbidity pattern of geriatric population in rural areas of western Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

Background: Aging is a complex, multifactorial, and inevitable process that begins before birth and continues throughout the life. It is an inevitable truth that older people in Indian society has been well perceived. Although age pyramid with wider top obviously narrates a success story of socioeconomic development and good public health practice in country, there is need to know the problem burden comprehensively. Objective: To study the morbidity pattern of the elderly. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2014 to June 2014. Sample size calculated was 855 and simple random sampling was used to select the villages. The information was collected on predesigned and pretested questionnaires and analysis was carried out with the help of Microsoft Excel and SPSS 20.0. Result: Of the total 855 respondents, 48.8% were men and 51.2% were women. Most deviated sex ratio was seen in the age group of 76–80 years where 57.5% population comprised women. Overall hypertension (52.8%) was the most common morbidity found in geriatric population followed by anemia (32.8%) and diabetes (32.3%). The overall morbidity status of elderly significantly associated with age, gender, working status, and type of family. Conclusion: There is an urgent need of dealing with the geriatric health problems in compressive and coordinated approach by health personals and good compliance by the elderly people.