This survey of disability in some 43,000 villagers believed to be aged ≥60
years found that only a minority (26%) reported ‘much difficulty’ on any of 12 functional capacities. The proportion increased markedly with age and amongst the most elderly (≥85
years) there were widespread problems, in lifting and carrying, with eyesight and with going outside the house for any distance. It is of note that only 29% of the elderly villagers reported receiving any help from their family members and virtually none had help from outside the family. However those receiving help from the family did appear to be those with the greatest needs.
The study was set up to find ways in which the extent and impact of disabilities could be lessened by appropriate interventions. The high disability rate among those with hemiplegia was expected but the recent introduction by GK of community physiotherapists may help to ensure that a greater proportion of survivors have rapid and appropriate rehabilitation. The comprehensive range of disability among those with a resting tremor is also of interest and would warrant a more focused inquiry: those reporting the symptom here are unlikely to have been formally assessed or treated. Further investigation is also needed of the possible contribution of high levels of manganese (commonly found in drinking water in rural Bangladesh [
3]) to Parkinson-like illness [
4]. If this were demonstrated, primary prevention of the disease and subsequent disability might be feasible. There is also some scope for intervention to meet the needs of the relatively small group – a total of 1243 – who reported that they would be helped by a prosthesis, mainly to aid mobility or vision. The high rate of disability reported by those with urinary incontinence is of particular interest, not least because of the possibility of intervention to improve its management [
5,
6]. The direction of causality between the incontinence and the reported disability (and the relation to depression) is likely to be complex. Given that toilet facilities in Bangladeshi village homes are outside the main living quarters, the ability to hold urine may be severely challenged in an elderly person with poor mobility and vision. A program to increase mobility and to improve the management of urinary incontinence would have priority in this population.
The strength of the study lies in the representation of functional difficulties and ill-health in an entire population of elderly rural villagers and in the completeness of the data: there were very few refusals and the paramedics were scrupulous about completing every question. The ability to match a substantial, and apparently representative, sub-group to census data collected 5
years earlier was also a strength of the study, allowing assessment of socio-demographic factors independent of current difficulties. The main weaknesses were the uncertainty about true age and the related difficulty of establishing a definitive list of eligible participants. Also, the data collected, both in the survey and census, failed to catch some elements of importance. While the survey asked about difficulties in understanding speech, for example, it did not ask about difficulties of expression: while the census asked about current smoking habit, it did not include amount smoked, or allow us to identify ex-smokers who had, perhaps, stopped smoking after developing disability, prior to the census. The pattern of causality was also uncertain for other observed relationships such as illiteracy and difficulty carrying heavy loads (where the physical demands may have been greater than for those with education) and the high levels of disability in those men who had already given up work by the time of the census, 5
years previously. Interpretation of the relation between poor functional capacity and reports of very often feeling depressed is also critical to decisions about interventions, designed to reduce both objective incapacity and also feelings of hopelessness. The study did not include objective measures of capacity, but relied on the villager’s own report of degree of difficulty with each dimension: such self-perception of incapacity may be the appropriate metric, although perhaps less so for those with cognitive impairment. It was reassuring that the paramedics very seldom recorded that the degree of disability was under-estimated. The converse – of exaggerating disability – was not explored systematically, but the low proportions reporting ‘much difficulty’, particularly in those below 70
years does not suggest that exaggeration was widespread.
This is not the first study of disability in Bangladesh, although it is by far the largest, covering villages from 4 Divisions of the country. An earlier community based study of some of the same villages found that 50% of those >80
years had physician diagnosed disabilities, most frequently hearing, vision and movement difficulties [
7]. Data from Matlab, an area to the south east of Dhaka, was included in the report of the WHO Sage studies, and showed greater disability in women, in older respondents, in people who were single, older, and less educated [
1]. The study, which included some 850 subjects ≥70
years, did not report the prevalence of particular disabilities. Other reports from Matlab include an attempt to better understand the value of self-reported health status in older Bangladesh villagers which found, as in the present study, that respondents were more likely to report ill health than disability [
8]. The strong relation between incontinence and depression observed here has been widely reported in other populations, including elderly people in Pakistan, with the need for cleanliness in Muslim religious observance being an additional dimension [
9-
11].
The messages from this study are far reaching. First, at the level of primary health care providers, the results underline the urgent need for programs focusing on the elderly, to alleviate those disabilities that are amenable to intervention and to provide support and care for those with multiple disabilities. Instituting these programs will require development of training programs and health education materials, so that care of the elderly can be successfully integrated into primary health care. Such concentration on the elderly will need new funding, and cannot rely simply on the redistribution of resources away from existing programs, such as those for mothers and children. From the study reported here it is clear that funds are needed to support programs to increase mobility, enhance vision and hearing and to decrease the toll of incontinence and depression found to be so common in these elderly villagers. Alleviating these disabilities will require new approaches to care for the rural elderly, backed by demonstration projects to evaluate the viability and effectiveness of culturally appropriate interventions. Although the study reported here has shown that family support is still provided for many (though not the majority) of these elderly villagers, with rapid urbanization, and the departure of the young and healthy to the cities, family structures for the care of the elderly will surely break down, as has already been shown in China [
12,
13]. Where young people leave, rural communities will be faced with the need to fill this gap with the provision of community facilities, giving help with feeding and personal care, and aids with vision and mobility to assure accessibility. With such help, the elderly can become more largely self-sufficient, as happens through comprehensive home and social care in wealthy developed counties, in which the maintenance of the elderly at home is seen as a prime goal for social programs. In Bangladesh, the government has begun to recognize the need for social welfare programs for the elderly, but the problems are still substantial, both in Bangladesh and other poor developing countries. Until recently the focus of WHO and donor agencies has been very largely on infants, children and those of reproductive age, but it is no longer defensible to assume either that the rural poor will not survive to old age – they increasingly do – or that younger women in the household will continue to be willing and available to help with basic needs. A new vision is needed in which the residual capacities of the old are nurtured, remediable deficiencies are attacked vigorously and community facilities put in place to reduce the physical, emotional and cognitive isolation of old people living out their years in discomfort and poverty.
1 Morshed Chowdhury,2 Rezaul Haque,3 Corbett McDonald,4 and Zafrullah Chowdhury5
publication history