Assessment of Nutritional Status of Elderly People in a Selected Old Home in Dhaka City of Bangladesh

Khondoker Mahmuda Akter Halim , Ratna Khatun , Alpana Akther , Faisal Muhammad

Abstract: Background: Older people are vulnerable to malnutrition for many reasons including physiological and functional changes that occur with age, lack of financial support and inadequate access to food. This study aimed to assess the nutritional status of elderly people in a selected old home in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at Probin Hospital, Agargoan in Dhaka and the target population were all the elderly people attending the selected hospital. A total of 115 elderly people was selected using a purposive sampling technique. After obtaining their consent data was collected by face to face interview technique using semi-structured questionnaire and it was analysed using a Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) statistical software version 20. Results: In the current study more than half (51.3%) of the respondents were aged 66-70 years and most of them were females (55.7%). Most of them (64.3%) had HSC & above level of education and Close to eight percent (77.4%) of the respondents were from urban area. Slightly below half (49.6%) of the respondents took bread & vegetables during breakfast and during lunch most of them (47 .8%) took rice, vegetable & meat. During dinner, 42.6% of the respondents took rice, vegetable & fish and little below three-fifths (59.1 %) of the respondents consumed 2 liters of water per day. About 55.7% of the respondents were restricted from sugary foods and 73.9% of them were restricted from saturated fat foods. Eighty percent of the respondents had chronic disease. Conclusion: Nowadays the percentage of elderly people with malnutrition is growing rapidly worldwide. Our findings reveal that little below half of the respondents had normal body weight and 22.6% of them were overweight. There is need for initiation of more efforts so as to help the elderly people to adopt a proper healthy life-style pattern.

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