Social and health concerns of elderly women in rural area in Tirupur District, Tamil Nadu.

Background: Population ageing is a major challenging demographic transition with socioeconomic and health issues. Women constitute 55% of all older persons facing a lot of ill-health, social deprivation, etc., Globally various studies have reported the health issues in men and women as a whole. This study is done to explore out the social and health concerns particularly in elderly women in rural setting in Tiruppur District, Tamil Nadu. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Dharapuram Block, Tiruppur District by Multistage Random sampling during November 2019-February 2020. About 250 elderly women were interviewed for sociodemographic details, co-morbidities, quality of life (QOL), and health seeking behavior. Descriptive statistics, Chi-square test, and logistic regression were used for analysis. Results: Mean age of the participants was 65.59 ± 5.92. Only 27.6% were literate. 158 (63.2%) were widow, 43.2% living alone and 65% have more than 2 comorbidities. Majority had vision problem, hearing problem, and hypertension. About 61.2% consumed tobacco and 48% had sleep disturbances. In QOL, overall mean score was poor. Factors like illiteracy, poverty, poor awareness on health services, social factors like loneliness had negative impact on QOL. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of social and health issues in the elderly women associated with poor QOL. Determinants like poverty, loneliness, poor awareness on health services have to be addressed at the level of primary healthcare to improve their QOL and reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases.