PREVALENCE OF OBESITY, DIABETES, AND HYPERTENSION AMONG HOUSEHOLD WOMEN, INDIA
Diseases linked to our way of life are growing, in every country of the world. Lack of proper knowledge, inadequate time, faulty eating habits, no exercise, smoking are all to blame for lifestyle diseases particularly for household women who are neglected the most. This study was carried out mainly to estimate prevalence of lifestyle diseases for predicting the future burden of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular diseases etc as well as to undertake preventive measures among women where there is hardly any data regarding lifestyle diseases.
OBJECTIVES: (i) To assess the prevalence of obesity, diabetes (DM) and hypertension and to co-relate risk factors associated if any among women of Ranchi, Jharkhand. (ii) To carry out lecture cum discussion to increase their knowledge and teach them simple preventive measures based on the prevalence of lifestyle diseases
METHODS:
A cross-sectional study was carried out among all the women staying in a particular community of Ranchi city. Data was collected among 1373 women who consented for the study using a pre-tested self-administered structured questionnaire and relevant investigations were carried out.
RESULTS:
The mean age of the participants was 29.01 with SD of 5.71.Majority (63.4%) of them basically belonged to urban areas. 65 % of them had a family monthly income of less than 20,000 while 2.5 % had above 40,000/-. 65 % were having mild anemia, while 9 % and 1% had moderate and severe anemia respectively. The prevalence of DM was 0.30% while 2 % were pre-diabetic. 16 % were obese and 38% were overweight.6 % were found to be hypertension who needed further evaluation. Obesity was significantly associated with DM (P=0.041) and hypertension (P=0.000). Similarly income was significantly associated with obesity (P=0.00), DM (P=0.010) and hypertension (P=0.000). Chi-square trend analysis also showed increasing trend of lifestyle diseases with income and DM, hypertension with obesity. An intensive lecture cum discussion and video display was carried out with regards to lifestyle diseases preventive measures which were appreciated by all.
CONCLUSIONS:
Prevalence of lifestyle diseases was high even though no baseline data exists. Intensive information, education, communication (IEC) activities involving simple preventive measures targeted to household women and frequent check on lifestyle diseases is the need of the hour. Lifestyle pattern and local environmental factors may play an important role which needs to be studied in detail.