Multiple faces of the health transition

This study was examined the relationship between gender, region, year and mortality rates of malignant neoplasm, heart disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular diseases. Data were collected from Ministry of Public Health in 2002-2009. Variables were gender, region, year and mortality rate. Results showed people living in Bangkok were the highest mortality rates of malignant neoplasm, heart disease, hypertension and cerebrovascular diseases when compared with other regions. People living in the South were the lowest mortality rates of malignant neoplasm as well as the lowest mortality rates of heart disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular diseases in the Northeast. Multiple regression analysis found gender, region, and year were statistical significance (p<0.05). People living in Bangkok were more likely to have mortality rates of malignant neoplasm, heart disease, hypertension, cerebrovascular diseases than other regions. Female was less likely to have mortality rates of malignant neoplasm, heart disease, hypertension and cerebrovascular diseases than male. The study dramatically showed about mortality differences in gender and region. Future research should strengthen risk factors mortality differences in each region, especially lifestyle, risk behavior and culture.

Objective: In bigger cities, slum dwelling women are reported to be unprivileged in terms of seeking health care services. An attempt is made to understand the patterns and levels of maternal morbidity and health care utilization. Also, to study the impact of socio-economic background on utilization which augments maternal morbidity.

Design and methodology: Data from a sample of 9003 women from top ten cities is selected. The national level Reproductive and Child Health Survey was conducted during 2007-08. Apart from primary level analyses, odds ratios of the effects of socio-economic factors on maternal morbidity are examined.

Setting: These cities are highly populated and a majority of them are the capitals of the states which that attract wide streams of migrants across the country. These mega cities are hierarchically ranked by Census of India, 2011.

Results: The women reported multiple complications during pregnancy, particularly during and post delivery. But, merely 22 percent have sought ante-natal and post natal care services.

Conclusions: Despite visible gaps in maternal morbidity and utilization to health care services, progressive efforts have been made in improving maternal health. The services are needed to viable, accessible and extensively spread in order to increase utilization.

A child’s birth weight is an important indicator of the child’s health status. One convincing proof of this is the study by Kotagal (1993) which shows that infants with low birth weight are 40 times more likely to die within the first 28 days of birth than normal birth weight infants. This paper examines the risk factors that increase the likelihood of low birth weight in the Philippines using data from the National Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS), which is designed to assess the demographic and health situation in the country. Using the ordinal logistic regression model, the study establishes that burning of biomass fuel (such as wood and agricultural crop, etc.) and coal for daily use of cooking and heating is a significant environmental risk factor of low birth weight. Use of biomass fuel increases the probability of a newborn’s having small size at birth. Moreover, the results also show that maternal smoking increases the probability of delivering a low birth weight baby. In addition to use of biomass fuel and mother’s smoking, other demographic factors that may be associated with low birth weight are examined as well. These factors and their effects give important information to couples as they seek to reduce the risk of having a baby with low birth weight.

In Bangladesh because of increasing life expectancy and falling fertility elderly population has been increasing. . The population projection data show that depending upon the achievement of replacement fertility by 2025 one in 10 persons will be elderly and by 2050 one in 5 persons will be elderly. Bangladesh will face many constraints in managing the challenges for large elderly population. This includes factors such as changing family structure, poverty, social and cultural norms, and inadequate health care facilities for the elderly population. This paper investigates increase longevity and decline in fertility are combining to convert the population age structure from young to old. This situation has implications on the family health care of the older persons and unmet need of health care services in the public sector. The support index shows that there will be fewer persons to support elderly population in future with implications in traditional family care.

The study proposes a new way to compute confidence intervals for life expectancy estimates, based on Monte Carlo simulations. Taking into account the stochastic variability is particularly relevant for geographical areas with small population size, as the limited number - if any - of death events and/or population at risk, especially at younger ages, may cause fluctuations in the estimates of life expectancies which make it difficult to identify trends. To test its robustness, the method is applied to about 300 complete life tables of European regions computed by Eurostat, representing a variety of mortality patterns and possible issues of data quality/availability. A comparison is also made with other two stochastic methods proposed in the literature (Chiang 1984 and Silcock et al. 2001), as well as sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of different age grouping in the life table.

Objective: This study aims to shed light on prevalence of underweight and overweight and its variations by socioeconomic factors in Thai Nguyen province of Vietnam.
Method: A total of 2695 respondents were successfully completed the questionnaire. Both WHO cut-off points for Asian and Pacific (AP) and international classification for Body mass index were used. Statistical analysis was performed using Stata software with the svy procedure.
Results: The prevalence of underweight is 20.1%, it is slightly but not significantly higher in females (21.2%) than males (18.9%). The prevalence of overweight in international and AP standards are 5.2% and 15.5% respectively. Again, no significant difference between males and females is found. There are no significant differences by ethnicity. People in middle aged have lowest risk of underweight and older people have greater risk of overweight than other. Higher income is associated with higher risk of overweight and lower income is associated with underweight. But this result is only significant in highest income group.
Conclusion: People of middle age, living in city or town are at lower risk of underweight. Whereas, people who is older and richest has greater risk of overweight.
Key words: underweight, overweight, Thai Nguyen, Vietnam

Health is a necessary condition for social roles; people can have a complete activity in society when they feel themselves healthy and also society deems them healthy. With increasing age, the elder health could be at risk.

The aim of this research is to study: how is the status of health (physical, mental, social and environmental) of elderly people in Tehran? Elderly women have a better status than men in the four domains of health? In terms of health status, which elderly groups are better or worse? Do elderly married have better health than unmarried ones? Educated elderly people have the higher status in all aspects of health than illiterate ones? The elderly, who are currently employed, experience better health in all aspects than elderly people who retired or elderly housewives.

In this survey, all elderly people residing in Tehran were studied which used of the research project data by using questionnaire.

The results indicate that the total elderly men have better health than older women in all areas of health. With increasing age, the health average of elderly falls. In all areas of health, elderly married people have better health than currently unmarried ones. Elderly people work or retirement experience more health than elderly housewives and disabled ones.

gamma-Gompertz frailty models indicate the heterogeneity of mortality both in male and female at advanced age in China; while female have a larger individual heterogeneity. In general, male show higher mixture mortality than female from 80 to 115 years old, however, female mortality starts to exceed male since about 96 years old controlling for their heterogeneity respectively. The married mostly elderly in male tend to have lower hazard rate by 32% compared to those without spouses. Proximity to children of male oldest of the old has a positive relationship with mortality only after controlling the health behaviors and condition variables, as the direct and indirect effect of proximity to children on mortality can be decomposed. Neither of the two family support factors affects the hazard rate in female. The gender differentials of dependence on spouses and children in term of social connections and support, selective effect of living arrangement related to health condition, role expectancy as well as health behaviors may together contribute to the above phenomenon.

In most of the developing countries especially in case of India delivery leads large proportion of maternal mortality and morbidity. The area taken into consideration for this study is West Bengal, India. The paper is based on DLHS data round three conducted in the year 2007-08. The aims of this paper are to examine the level of delivery and post-delivery complications among currently married women and also to analyse treatment seeking behaviour of these women. The result indicates that large number of women in West Bengal suffers from complications. Almost half of the women deliver their child at home without been attended by trained workers. It has been realised that the level of care required for the women during their delivery is not provided. While stating the reason behind not availing the institution for delivery, it appeared that 40 percent did not find that as necessary and 31 percent did not get time to go. The importance of mass awareness campaign regarding safe and institutional delivery is recognised. The quality of services in government hospital should be improved. It is recommended that in order to have a safe home delivery, there should be sufficient trained workers who can conduct delivery in a hygienic manner and refer to a hospital during emergency in the case of complication.

Childhood is a significant stage of life and deprivation during this period can have long-term adverse impact on the wellbeing of children. Reduction in infant and child morality is likely the most important of the millennium development goals, as children are most important assets of a nation. The focus of this paper is to examine the determinants of childhood mortality and child health in India and the factors explaining the differential performance of the child immunization and treatment of childhood diseases. For this purpose data are taken from the three rounds of the National Family Health Survey of India (NFHS) conducted in 1992-93, 1998-99 and 2005-06. The analysis reveals that infant mortality continues to decline and the decline in child mortality is even more pronounced. The situation regarding child immunization rates, however, is not as clear. By the time the new born is one year old, it is supposed to receive BCG vaccination against tuberculosis, measles vaccination, and three doses each of polio and DPT vaccine. But, there was only a small improvement in full vaccination coverage. Progress in vaccination coverage varies widely among the states. Treatment of childhood illnesses need to be improved, Diarrhoea continues to be a major health problem for many children. Although knowledge about Oral Rehydration Salts (