A comparative study on morbidity profile among the geriatric population of urban and rural area of West Bengal

Abstract

Background- According to the WHO Ageing & Health Factsheet, the proportion of the world's population over 60 years will nearly double from 12% to 22% between 2015 and 2020, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years by 2020, 80% of older people will be living in low- and middle-income countries in 2050. With this background present study was conducted to compare on morbidity profile among the geriatric population of urban and rural area of West Bengal. Methods – Community based cross sectional study was conducted in rural field practice area and urban slum which is urban field practice area of Community Medicine department of a Medical College situated at Kolkata, West Bengal from January 2021 to March 2021. Total sample size is 412, are be divided equally in both urban and rural areas i.e. 206 complete samples from each area are interviewed by a pre-designed, pretested structured questionnaire. The collected data was compiled with the help of Microsoft excel & analyzed by SPSS version – 19, in terms of statistical methods like table, mean, standard deviation, chi square, z test, multiple logistic regression. Results - In urban area, 69.4% of geriatric population belonged to 60-69 years & 48% geriatric population belonged to 70-79 years of age groups whereas in rural area the findings were respectively 63.6 % & 30.6 %.43.7% of total geriatric populations are financially independent and out of 56.3% dependent populations, rural geriatric population showed marginally higher predominance (60.2%) over the urban (52.4%). It is revealed from this study that acid peptic disorder (53.6%) is the major G.I disorders, followed by constipation (44.2%) and dental caries (40.0%). We also found that 42.5% geriatric population are suffering depression. Urban geriatric populations were suffering (46.6%) a little more from depression than rural population (38.3%). Conclusions- The present study reveals high prevalence of morbidity among geriatric population. So, awareness among elderly people should be created for regular health check-ups for prevention and early detection of their health problems.