Health related quality of life of the geriatric population living in rural areas of West Tripura district of India: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Growing life expectancy is challenging the quality of health care for elderly. Information regarding health related quality of life (QOL) may help policy makers to design need based health programs for this population. The objectives of this study were to estimate health related QOL of the geriatric population living in rural areas of West Tripura district and to compare it between ethnic and non-ethnic populations in respect to important domains. This community based cross-sectional study was conducted during 1st February 2019 to 31st March 2020 among 225 geriatric subjects of rural West Tripura district chosen by multistage sampling. World Health Organization’s QOL-BREF scale was used for data collection. Among the study population 46.2% had overall good health related QOL. About 52.9% had good QOL in environment and 37.3% had good QOL in social relationship domains. Marginally higher proportion of the subjects from ethnic origin had better QOL than the non-ethnic but it was not significant. Higher proportion of the Muslim subjects had better QOL than the rest, but it was also not significant. Bivariate analysis showed significant associations of QOL with age, sex, literacy, financial condition, socioeconomic status and type of family. Multivariate analysis identified male sex, younger age and living with spouse as significant predictors of good QOL. Overall health related QOL of the geriatric people living in rural areas of West Tripura district is poor but younger male subjects, of ethnic origin and living with spouse may enjoy relatively better QOL.