Assessment of Morbidity Profile of Rural Population Residing in the Field Practice Area of a Government Medical College

Abstract

Background: Morbidity can be defined as any deviation from the state of normal physical and mental well-being. The health of an individual does have a direct relationship with human resources, development and economic development of a nation. The existing hospital based, disease – oriented health care model has provided health benefits mainly to the urban elite, approximately 80% of health facilities are concentrated in urban areas. The rural areas where nearly 69% of the population live, do not enjoy the benefits of the modern curative and preventive health services. Therefore the present study was undertaken with the objective to assess the health needs of the rural population in terms of morbidity. Materials and Methods: The Cross-sectional study was conducted in a village which comes under field practice area of the Department of Community Medicine. The village was selected by using lottery method out of all the villages which comes under the field practice area. All villagers in the village constituted the study population. 2270 Study population (420 families) were involved in the study. A house to house survey was done using interview technique as a tool for data collection. Predesigned questionnaire was used to record the necessary information. Data regarding socio demographic factors and any disease condition among family members was collected. Results and Conclusions: Present study comprises of 2270 study participants in all age groups. The most common morbidities more than 1% population affected (> 22 cases) were Anaemia 517(22.77%), Acute respiratory infection 260(11.45%), Diabetes and Hypertension 255(11.23%), Diarrhoea 93(4.09%), Refractory error and cataract 46(2.02%), Arthritis 44(1.93%) and Dental caries 34(1.49%). There is dual burden of communicable as well noncommunicable diseases in our study population.