Publication: Rural-urban health disparities among older adults in South Africa
Issued Date
2019-01-01
Resource Type
ISSN
20712936
20712928
20712928
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2-s2.0-85070020533
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Mahidol University
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SCOPUS
Bibliographic Citation
African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine. Vol.11, No.1 (2019)
Suggested Citation
Karl Peltzer, Nancy Phaswana-Mafuya, Supa Pengpid Rural-urban health disparities among older adults in South Africa. African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine. Vol.11, No.1 (2019). doi:10.4102/phcfm.v11i1.1890 Retrieved from: https://repository.li.mahidol.ac.th/handle/20.500.14594/52254
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Title
Rural-urban health disparities among older adults in South Africa
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Abstract
© 2019. The Authors. Background: There are limited studies assessing rural-urban disparities among older adults in Africa including South Africa. Aim: This study explores rural-urban health disparities among older adults in a population-based survey in South Africa. Setting: Data for this study emanated from the 2008 study on 'Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) wave 1' (N = 3280) aged 50 years or older in South Africa. Methods: Associations between exposure variables and outcome variables (health status variables and chronic conditions) were examined through bivariate analyses and multivariable logistic regression. Results: Rural dwellers were more likely to be older, black African and had lower education and wealth than urban dwellers. Rural and urban dwellers reported a similar prevalence of self-rated health status, quality of life, severe functional disability, arthritis, asthma, lung disease, hypertension, obesity, underweight, stroke and/or angina, low vision, depression, anxiety and nocturnal sleep problems. Adjusting for socio-demographic and health risk behaviour variables, urban dwellers had a higher prevalence of diabetes (OR: 2.36, 95% CI: 1.37, 4.04), edentulism (OR: 2.79, 95% CI: 1.27, 6.09) and cognitive functioning (OR: 1.91, 95% CI: 1.27, 2.85) than rural dwellers. Conclusion: There are some rural-urban health disparities in South Africa, that is, urban dwellers had a higher prevalence of diabetes, edentulism and cognitive functioning than rural ones. Understanding these rural-urban health variations may help in developing better strategies to improve health across geolocality in South Africa.