health survey of elderly population living in a poor urban area in Alexandria. Part 1: Socio-demographic, lifestyle, and functional abilities

ABSTRACT

The important demographic changes which occurred all over the world in the last decade have led to the marked increase of the number of elderly persons. Such changes have imposed the necessity for profound studies for the assessment of the health status of older adults required for planning and resources allocation for their health care. A house to house survey was conducted in a poor urban area in Alexandria and included 83 elderly males and 147 elderly females. Socio-demographic, lifestyle, and functional abilities were assessed by using a pre-coded interviewing questionnaire. The majority of the elderly were illiterate [87.4%], non-working [92.2%] depending mainly on pension [71.3%] which was not enough in 51.7% of the cases. Most of the elderly males were married [79.5%], living with spouse and sons and daughters [57.8%], while most of the elderly females were widowed [67.3%] and living with their children [55.8%]. More than half of the elderly were caring for themselves, spouse was the main care giver for elderly males [25.3%] while sons and daughters were the main care givers for elderly females [43.5%]. Adequate social contact of the elderly with sons and daughters was revealed [89.6%] but not with their friends especially among elderly females [30.6%]. High smoking rate among elderly males [41%], lack of exposure to sun [45.2%] and sedentary lifestyle [87.8%] was detected among both sexes. Limitations in ADL, was detected among 16.1% of the elderly while limitations of IADL was detected among 49.2% of them