Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Self-Assessed Health Status among Ethnic Elderly of Tea Garden Workers in Bangladesh

  • Published:
Ageing International Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The proportion of elderly has been increased gradually over the past years and this has created many causes for concerns particularly in individual’s health status. Relatively little is known about health status of older ethnic group across the world. The study aims to explore the health status of ethnic elderly among Tea Garden workers in Bangladesh. A total of 229 elderly were interviewed from different tea gardens. Prevalence ratio and adjusted prevalence ratio were calculated using simple and multiple Poisson regression analysis. The study revealed that more than 90% of the elderly had suffered from multi-morbidity. Gender, age, family behavior, number of meals in a day, taking milk or milk products and taking sugar were highly associated factor to lead healthy life for elderly. Female and unemployed elderly were in more risk to suffer from multi-morbidity, illiterate were also a risk factor for multi-morbidity but effected by confounding factors. An elderly who rated himself as unhealthy was 1.75 times more risk in compare to healthy elderly. In addition, the ethnic elderly who were suffering from difficulties of seeing, getting up, standing, remembering and others disability were in more risk of suffering from multi-morbidity.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Albano, J. D., Ward, E., Jemal, A., Anderson, R., Cokkinides, V. E., Murray, T., Henley, J., Liff, J., & Thun, M. J. (2007). Cancer mortality in the United States by education level and race. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 99, 1384–1394.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ali, M.Y. (1999). Textbook of community medicine and public health. 3rd ed. Dhaka: RKH Publishers.

  • Ahmed, S. M., Tomson, G., Petzold, M., & Kabir, Z. N. (2005). Socioeconomic status overrides age and gender in determining health-seeking behaviour in rural Bangladesh. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 83, 109–117.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banjare, P., Pradhan, J., Chaturvedi, S. (2014). Socio-economic inequalities in the prevalence of multi-morbidity among the rural elderly in Bargarh District of Odisha (India). PLoS ONE, 9(6), e97832.

    Google Scholar 

  • Britt, H. C., Harrison, C. M., Miller, G. C., & Knox, S. A. (2008). Prevalence and patterns of multimorbidity in Australia. The Medical Journal of Australia, 189, 72–77.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beydoun, M. A., & Popkin, B. M. (2005). The impact of socio-economic factors on functional status decline among community-dwelling older adults in China. Social Science & Medicine, 60(9), 2045–2057.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, A. C., & Trivedi, P. K. (2013). Regression of count data (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press

  • Cohen, S. (2004). Social relationships and health. American Psychologist, 59(8), 676–684.

    Google Scholar 

  • Calle, E. E., Rodriguez, C., Walker-Thurmond, K., & Thun, M. J. (2003). Overweight, obesity, and mortality from cancer in a prospectively studied cohort of U.S. adults. The New England Journal of Medicine, 348, 1625–1638.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, S., & Syme, S. L. (1985). Social support and health. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daveluy, C., Pica, L., Audet, N., Courtemanche, R., & Lapointe, F. (2000). Enquête sociale et de santé 1998. Québec, Institut de la statistique du Québec, 2e, 57–295.

  • De Vries, N. M., Van Ravensberg, C. D., Hobbelen, J. S. M., Rikkert, M. G. M. O., Staal, J. B., & Van Der Sanden, M. W. G. N. (2012). Effects of physical exercise therapy on mobility, physical functioning, physical activity and quality of life in community-dwelling older adults with impaired mobility, physical disability and/or multi-morbidity: a meta-analysis. Ageing Research Reviews, 11(1), 136–149.

    Google Scholar 

  • Druss, B. G., Marcus, S. C., Rosenheck, R. A., Olfson, M., Tanielian, T., & Pincus, H. A. (2000). Understanding disability in mental and general medical conditions. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157(9), 1485–1491.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fedewa, S. A., Etzioni, R., Flanders, W. D., Jemal, A., & Ward, E. M. (2010). Association of insurance and race/ethnicity with disease severity among men diagnosed with prostate cancer, National Cancer Database 2004–2006. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 19, 2437–2444.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flores, R., & Gillespie, S. (2001). Health and nutrition: Emerging and reemerging issues in developing countries (No. 571–2016–39072).

  • Glynn, L. G., Valderas, J. M., Healy, P., Burke, E., Newell, J., Gillespie, P., & Murphy, A. W. (2011). The prevalence of multimorbidity in primary care and its effect on health care utilization and cost. Family Practice, 28(5), 516–523.

  • Gomez, S. L., O'Malley, C. D., Stroup, A., Shema, S. J., & Satariano, W. A. (2007). Longitudinal, population-based study of racial/ethnic differences in colorectal cancer survival: Impact of neighborhood socioeconomic status, treatment and comorbidity. BMC Cancer, 7, 193.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gill, T. M., Gahbauer, E. A., Han, L., & Allore, H. G. (2010). Trajectories of disability in the last year of life. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(13), 1173–1180.

  • Guralnik, J. M. (1996). Assessing the impact of comorbidity in the older population. Annals of Epidemiology, 6, 376–380 [PubMed].

    Google Scholar 

  • Hilbe, J. M. (2014). Modeling count data. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press

  • Hudon, C., Soubhi, H., & Fortin, M. (2008). Relationship between multimorbidity and physical activity: Secondary analysis from the Quebec health survey. BMC Public Health, 8(1), 304.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, 241, 540–545.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316.

    Google Scholar 

  • Idler, E. L., & Benyamini, Y. (1997). Self-rated health and mortality: A review of twenty-seven community studies. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21–37.

  • Jie, Y., Isa, Z. M., Jie, X., Ju, Z. L., & Ismail, N. H. (2013). Urban vs. Rural factors that affect adult asthma. In Reviews of environmental contamination and toxicology (Vol. 226, pp. 33–63). New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joshi, K., Kumar, R., & Avasthi, A. (2003). Morbidity profile and its relationship with disability and psychological distress among elderly people in northern India. International Journal of Epidemiology, 32, 978–987.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jylhä, M. (2009). What is self-rated health and why does it predict mortality? Towards a unified conceptual model. Social Science & Medicine, 69(3), 307–316.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keller, H. H., Dwyer, J. J., Senson, C., Edwards, V., & Edward, G. (2007). A social ecological perspective of the influential factors for food access described by low-income seniors. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 1(3), 27–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kabir, Z. N., Tishelman, C., Agüero-Torres, H., Chowdhury, A. M. R., Winblad, B., & Höjer, B. (2003). Gender and rural–urban differences in reported health status by older people in Bangladesh. Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 37(1), 77–91.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khokhar, S., Stern, Y., Bell, K., Anderson, K., Noe, E., Mayeux, R., & Albert, S. (2001). Persistent mobility deficit in the absence of deficits in activities of daily living: A risk factor for mortality. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 49, 1539–1543.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan, M. S., Newsom, J. T., McFarland, B. H., & Lu, L. (2001). Demographic and psychosocial correlates of physical activity in late life. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 21, 306–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(01)00364-6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khanam, M. A., Streatfield, P. K., Kabir, Z. N., Qiu, C., Cornelius, C., & Wahlin, Å. (2011). Prevalence and patterns of multimorbidity among elderly people in rural Bangladesh: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Health, Population, and Nutrition, 29(4), 406.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kinsey, T., Jemal, A., Liff, J., Ward, E., & Thun, M. (2008). Secular trends in mortality from common cancers in the United States by educational attainment, 1993–2001. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 100, 1003–1012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kivimäki, M., Kuosma, E., Ferrie, J. E., Luukkonen, R., Nyberg, S. T., Alfredsson, L., Batty, G. D., et al. (2017). Overweight, obesity, and risk of cardiometabolic multimorbidity: pooled analysis of individual-level data for 120 813 adults from 16 cohort studies from the USA and Europe. The Lancet Public Health, 2(6), e277–e285.

    Google Scholar 

  • Landi, F., Liperoti, R., Russo, A., Capoluongo, E., Barillaro, C., Pahor, M., Bernabei, R. & Onder, G. (2010). Disability, more than multimorbidity, was predictive of mortality among older persons aged 80 years and older. Journal of clinical epidemiology, 63(7), 752–759.

  • Marengoni, A., Angleman, S., Melis, R., Mangialasche, F., Karp, A., Garmen, A., Meinow, B., & Fratiglioni, L. (2011). Aging with multimorbidity: A systematic review of the literature. Ageing Research Reviews, 10(4), 430–439.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mein, G. K., Shipley, M. J., Hillsdon, M., Ellison, G. T., & Marmot, M. G. (2005). Work, retirement and physical activity: Cross-sectional analyses from the Whitehall II study. European Journal of Public Health, 15, 317–322. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cki087.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Montero-Odasso, M., Bergman, H., Beland, F., Sourial, N., Fletcher, J. D., & Dallaire, L. (2009). Identifying mobility heterogeneity in very frail older adults. Are frail people all the same? Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, 49, 272–277.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miah, A., Miah, M. M. H., Kamal, M., Chowdhury, M. I., & Rahmatullah, M. (2012). Natural radioactivity and associated dose rates in soil samples of Malnichera tea garden in Sylhet district of Bangladesh. Journal of Nuclear and Particle Physics, 2(6), 147–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muaz, S. S. A., Hasan, M. R., Shamim, S. A., Dev, A., & Kamar, S. (2010). Nutritional status of 1-5 years children of the tea Workers in Sylhet division. Bangladesh Journal of Child Health, 34(1), 11–16.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGee, D., Cooper, R., Liao, Y., & Durazo-Arvizu, R. (1996). Patterns of comorbidity and mortality risk in Blacks and Whites. Annals of Epidemiology, 6, 381–385.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mayberry, R. M., Coates, R. J., Hill, H. A., Click, L. A., Chen, V. W., Austin, D. F., Redmond, C. K., Fenoglio-Preiser, C. M., Hunter, C. P., Haynes, M. A., Muss, H. B., Wesley, M. N., Greenberg, R. S., & Edwards, B. K. (1995). Determinants of black/white differences in colon cancer survival. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 87, 1686–1693.

    Google Scholar 

  • National Institute of Mental Health (2017). What is Prevalence? Retrieve from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/what-is-prevalence.shtml on 27 August, 2018.

  • Purty, A. J., Bazroy, J., Kar, M., Vasudevan, K., Veliath, A., & Panda, P. (2006). Morbidity pattern among the elderly population in the rural area of Tamil Nadu. India. Turk J Med Sci., 36, 45–50.

    Google Scholar 

  • Putt, M., Long, J. A., Montagnet, C., Silber, J. H., Chang, V. W., Liao, K., et al. (2009). Racial differences in the impact of comorbidities on survival among elderly men with prostate cancer. Medical Care Research and Review, 66(4), 409–435.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodriguez, C., Freedland, S. J., Deka, A., Jacobs, E. J., McCullough, M. L., Patel, A. V., Thun, M. J., & Calle, E. E. (2007). Body mass index, weight change, and risk of prostate cancer in the Cancer prevention study II nutrition cohort. Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 16, 63–69.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schneider, S., & Becker, S. (2005). Prevalence of physical activity among the working population and correlation with work-related factors: results from the first German National Health Survey. Journal of Occupational Health, 47, 414–423. https://doi.org/10.1539/joh.47.414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shahidullah, M (2017). Common health problems in elderly people in the independent, retrieve from http://www.theindependentbd.com/arcprint/details/11790/2017-10-09 on 29 April, 2018.

  • Srinivasan, K., Vaz, M., & Thomas, T. (2010). Prevalence of health related disability among community dwelling urban elderly from middle socioeconomic strata in Bangaluru, India. Indian Journal of Medical Research, 131(4).

  • Sharkey, J. R. (2003). Risk and presence of food insufficiency are associated with low nutrient intakes and multimorbidity among homebound older women who receive home-delivered meals. The Journal of Nutrition, 133(11), 3485–3491.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tewari, A. K., Gold, H. T., Demers, R. Y., Johnson, C. C., Yadav, R., Wagner, E. H., Field, T. S., Divine, G., & Menon, M. (2009). Effect of socioeconomic factors on long-term mortality in men with clinically localized prostate cancer. Urology., 73, 624–630.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tammemagi, C. M., Nerenz, D., Neslund-Dudas, C., Feldkamp, C., & Nathanson, D. (2005). Comorbidity and survival disparities among black and white patients with breast cancer. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association., 294, 1765–1772.

    Google Scholar 

  • UN (2019). Ageing retrieve fromhttp://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/ageing/. Accessed 07 Jan 2019

  • van den Akker, M., Buntinx, F., & Knottnerus, J. A. (1996). Comorbidity or multimorbidity: what's in a name? A review of literature. The European Journal of General Practice, 2, 65–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • van den Akker, M., Buntinx, F., Metsemakers, J. F. M., Roos, S., & Knottnerus, J. A. (1998). Multimorbidity in general practice: Prevalence, incidence, and determinants of co-occurring chronic and recurrent diseases. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 51, 367–375 [PubMed].

    Google Scholar 

  • van den Akker, M., Buntinx, F., & Knottnerus, J. A. (1996b). Comorbidity or multimorbidity: what's in a name? A review of literature. The European Journal of General Practice, 2(2), 65–70.

    Google Scholar 

  • Violan, C., Foguet-Boreu, Q., Flores-Mateo, G., Salisbury, C., Blom, J., Freitag, M., Glynn, L., Muth, C., & Valderas, J. M. (2014). Prevalence, determinants and patterns of multimorbidity in primary care: A systematic review of observational studies. PLoS One, 9(7), e102149. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102149.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organization. (2011). Global health and aging (pp. 1–32). Geneva: World Health Organization.

    Google Scholar 

  • World Health Organization. (2004). Towards age-friendly primary health care (p. 11). Geneva: World Health Organization (31 accessed on 15 February 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  • World Population Ageing (2017) report Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division.

  • Zhou, B., Chen, K., Wang, J., Wang, H., Zhang, S., & Zheng, W. (2011). Quality of life and related factors in the older rural and urban Chinese populations in Zhejiang province. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 30, 199–225.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Dr. Ferdushi is grateful to the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) Research Center for funding this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of General Education Development, Daffodil International University, Dhaka, 1207, Bangladesh

    Md Kamrul Hossain

  2. Department of Statistics, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet, 3114, Bangladesh

    Kanis Fatama Ferdushi

  3. The Graduate School, University of West London, St Mary’s Road, London, W5 5RF, UK

    Hafiz T. A. Khan

Authors
  1. Md Kamrul Hossain
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kanis Fatama Ferdushi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hafiz T. A. Khan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Md Kamrul Hossain.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

There is no conflict of interest among the authors.

Informed Consent

None.

Ethical Treatment of Experimental Subjects (Animal and Human)

None.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Hossain, M.K., Ferdushi, K.F. & Khan, H.T.A. Self-Assessed Health Status among Ethnic Elderly of Tea Garden Workers in Bangladesh. Ageing Int 44, 385–398 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-019-09354-w

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-019-09354-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation