Health problems and health-care seeking behavior of the elderly in Bangladesh: A study in rural and urban area

Background: In many countries of the world, the demographic transition towards lower fertility and mortality results in increased ageing population and unprecedented increases not only in the absolute numbers of older persons but also in the relative share of the elderly population. So, the needs and problems of elderly are discussed separately. Objective: This study aimed to find the common health problems among the elderly and their health care seeking behavior.  Methodology: A Cross-sectional descriptive study was designed with randomly selected 500 elderly subjects, with proportionately distributed in rural and urban area by using a pre-tested well-structured questionnaire. Result:  Among the most geriatric diseases, ear and eye problems were common and complain of some systemic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, body ache or asthma. Besides, we found in urban part, some unusual prevalence of dental caries, bleeding per rectum and weakness. In rural part, psychiatric illness is more. Urban people have more complains of breathlessness than the rural people. Urban people complained more of burning sensation of urine and skin problems. More than half had generalized weakness. Diabetes is only 18% prevalent in rural and that is 48% prevalent in urban part. 75% of the rural and only 12% of the urban complained of back pain. A big share had complained of depression, hopelessness and unhappiness. 81.5% of the rural respondents go to quack and in urban area, people move for modern treatments. 40% of the urban people and only 18% of the rural people have visited dental surgeon, at least once in their life. They often need companion to access to health center. Conclusion: Elderly health problems are of different modality and needs to be addressed under a comprehensive, but separate division and proper care and support needs to be ensured.