Geriatric Healthcare

An epidemiological transition is witnessed in the last one decade in India. Demographic ageing is a global phenomenon. Healthcare for Older People has becoming a major issue in many countries of the world. By 2025 the worlds population is expected to include more than 830 million people at an age of 65 and over the population of the world has stood around 6.5 billion in the dawn of 21st century and is expected to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050. Also proportion of the elderly to the total population is expected to increase from 10 percent in 2000 to 15 percent by 2025 and over 21 percent by 2050.The population growth trend of elderly in India is somewhat similar to the worlds trend. Following Population Census of India the population of elderly was only 24 million in 1961 increased to 43 million in 1981 to 57 million in 1991 and about 77 million in 2001. Further their share in the total population has also risen from 5.63 percent in 1961 to 6.58 percent in 1991. The linkage between ageing and disability is a biological fact where the risk of disability increases with increase in age. However with proper policy intervention onset of disability can be delayed. Ageing should not be treated as synonymous of disability as a large proportion of older people live with good health status and without significant mental or physical decline. This link is very important particularly for countries like India where age-structure of the total population is still predominantly young or middle aged but the age structure of disabled persons is predominantly elderly.Recent statistics related to elderly people in India according to census 2001 showed that as many as 75 of elderly persons were living in rural areas. About 48.2 of elderly persons were women out of whom 55 were widows. 7 ndash 8 of Geriatric population is confronted with Cataract Prostate Problems depression cardiovascular arthritis and adult on-set diabetes. Other lifestyle disorders like obesity hypertension stress tooth decay in addition to environmentally triggered allergic asthma water borne diseases typhoid jaundice and many more on the list. The socio-economic problems of the elderly are nowadays aggravated by factors such as the lack of social security and inadequate facilities for health care rehabilitation etc.Living arrangements of older people are influenced by several factors such as gender health status and presence of disability socioeconomic status and societal traditions. To overcome these problems