Morbidity Pattern and Its Determinants in Urban Field Practice Area of VIMS, Bellary - A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND India is doubly burdened with communicable and non-communicable diseases (NCD). Knowledge regarding morbidity profile is important for timely intervention so as to improve the quality of life. For effective health strategies, it is important to know the disease burden of a community. As for the effective preventive strategies, it’s important to know the information regarding disease burden and changing trends of diseases in the locality. Hence this study was done to find the morbidity pattern of urban population in Bellary district, Karnataka. METHODS A cross sectional study was carried out in Millerpet, urban health training centre (UHTC), Bellary, Karnataka. The respective UHTC covers 69195 populations, which has eight wards. Simple random sampling technique was adopted to select the ward. The study was carried out in the selected ward and the study duration was for a period of 3 months. Based on the estimated sample size, 416 houses were selected using random number method. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) software version 26 was used for analysing data. Descriptive statistics were used to describe socio demographic and morbidity conditions. RESULTS The most common morbidity among 416 houses were found to be diabetes (22.8 %) followed by hypertension (20 %) and musculoskeletal problems (9 %). Majority of the houses were of nuclear type and the most common age group was 31 - 60 (91.8 %) years followed by 13 - 30 years (80.8 %). 167 (40.1 %) houses had at least one morbidity and 451 (41.4) subjects had at least one morbidity. Socio-demographic variables like age group, family size, monthly income, occupation of head of the family and type of the family were found to be statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS The study revealed that non communicable are the most common diseases present and there is a need to further evaluate the factors responsible so that preventive measures can be taken at the earliest so as to improve the quality of life. KEYWORDS Morbidity Pattern, Urban, Bellary