Physical Health Problems of Elderly Women in Gaindakot Vdc

Abstract

There are many health problems in old age. Elderly people are vulnerable to physical, social, emotional and socioeconomic problems. In comparison to elder females are suffered by many types of physical problems. Along with this, elderly women are facing with several problems day by day. So the entitle "Physical Health Problems of Elderly Women in Gaindakot VDC" was selected for study is based on the primary data collected from the door to door visit. The main objectives of this study are to find out the physical health problems of elderly women in Gaindakot VDC of Nawalparasi District. In the context of elderly people, the researcher intended to identify the main physical problems of elderly women in Gaindakot VDC of Nawalparasi District. This is a new kind of study in it's nature. The result of the study is hoped to be useful as a guideline for the policy markers, teachers, experts, students, researchers and planners as it had been carried out with the sincere norms of dissertation writing. In the study area, total populations of elderly women aged 60 years and above were 117. All of them were selected by purposive sampling method. An interview schedule, observation sheet were used for the collection of necessary information. Almost all the respondents were found to be suffering from different kinds of the health problems. The major health problems, which were found 17.09 % of total were poor eye sighted, 15.38% were heart diseased, 8.55% had backache, others health problems such as headache, swelling of legs (Odema), gastritis problems, joint ache etc. were also found in some respondents. It was found that age group 65-69, 70-74, 75-79 were suffered from different kinds of health problems. Blindness, respiratory diseases were present more in Brahmin and Chhetri respondents. They study also found that 17.09% respondents had eye diseases, 15.38% had respiratory diseases, 5.13% had joint diseases, 6.84% have Gastric and 4.27% had uterus prolapsed. A part from these diabetes was also present in some respondents It was also found that 12.82% percent respondents had bad body posture, 34.19% had poor condition of teeth, 10.26% had poor condition of skin, 11.11% respondents had poor condition of hair and 35.88% respondents had poor/bad personal hygiene. According to study, there is no provision of regular check up of elderly women in sub- health post and clinics. The existing health practices of elderly women regarding food and nutrition, personal hygiene, use of safe drinking water, bathing, smoking and health check up is not satisfactory. From this study the researcher gave suggestions to the policy level, VDC and to the further researchers that the government and non-government sector should support such people ensuring adequate nursing care. Further more, such type of studies should be conducted at the national as well as local level.