Biography
Mr. Bhim Prasad Sapkota is young and energetic public health scientist working at Ministry of Health for Government of Nepal. He has worked as government employee in different positions and locations since 2001. He has completed Masters degree in Public Health and Masters degree in Sociology from Tribhuwan University, Nepal.
He has involved in more than a dozen of research projects as principal investigator. His area of interest is epidemiology of infectious disease and epidemiology of non communicable diseases among vulnerable populations like elderly, pregnant,Infancy, childhood and adolescents. He has spent almost five years in public health research specially targeting the old aged population in different Nepalese communities.
Sapkota, B.
Paper
Prevalence of Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) Risk Factors among Nepalese old aged People
Background Proportion and absolute number of elders around the world are increasing dramatically. Elderly is age of gradual and life-long accumulation of molecular and cellular damage with a broad range of psychosocial change. With the increasing age, numerous underlying physiological changes occur, and
the risk of chronic disease rises. The emerging pandemic of non-communicable disease (NCD) among global population is creating health challenges among elders too. Burden of NCDs is increasingly affecting developing countries like Nepal. Elders account for 8.6 % of Nepal’s population but due to lack of research evidences and resources health policies and interventions are silent to address the health needs of elders.
Methods The study was conducted to assess the NCD risk factors among above 60 years population in
January-June, 2016 by cross sectional and descriptive research design. Data was collected by using NCD step survey tools among 1326 respondents. Collected data was entered in Epi data 3.1 and analyzed in SPSS version 16.0 by using descriptive statistic like frequency, percentage, mean, median and standard deviation.
Result Majority of (58.3%) respondents were female and median age was 72.7 years. About one fifth
(18.8%) of male and 9.3% of female respondents were current smokers. Alcohol consumption was prevalent among 16.1% of the respondents. Only 2.1% respondents were doing adequate physical activity. Consumption of dietary fat and salt is higher among 24% and 32% of the respondents respectively. Overweight was among 14% and obesity was among 2.3% of the respondents. Higher
serum cholesterol was detected among 18.3% of the respondents. At least one NCD was diagnosed
among 32 % of the respondents among them only 9.05 % were not taking any of the medicines.
Prevalence of 3-5 risk factors was found among 19% of the respondents and only 0.7 % of the
respondents were completely free of risk factors.
REVISED The association of NCD was statistically significant with smoking (p=< 0.001, OR=13.29, CL;
09.01-18.40), alcoholism (p= < 0.001, OR= 5.05, CL; 02.48-16.13), family history (p= 0.002, OR= 2.33, CL; 1.45-4.39), obesity (p= 0.010, OR=2.481, CL; 1.040-6.667), physical activity (p= 0.004, OR= 3.21, CL;2.03-5.17) and Serum Cholesterol (p= 0.003,OR =14.5, CL; 10.04-19.78).
Conclusion Almost all the old aged people are living with risk of Non Communicable Diseases. Most of the NCD risk factors are behavioral and modifiable whereas few are biological factors. Health policies and interventions targeted for elders need to focus on modifying the high risk behaviors among old aged people.
