Abstract:
Diabetes Mellitus has emerged as one of the most challenging public health problems
currently. It affects over 366 million people worldwide and this figure is likely to
double by 2030. The greatest burden of this condition is felt in low and middle-income
countries which account for about 80% of all cases of diabetes. Diabetes prevalence
increases sharply with age, and it is projected that by the year 2025, the majority of
persons with diabetes will be aged 65years or older with 55% of diabetes deaths
occurring in women. The limited availability of high quality data on health
disaggregated by sex and age has been a major obstacle to gender responsive planning
and policy-making therefore it is urgent to collect, analyze and publish data
disaggregated by sex and age. The study therefore aimed to address the gap in
knowledge by focusing on the factors that affected diabetic women over 50 years of
age which included awareness levels, self management practices and socio economic
factors. The study adopted a cross sectional, descriptive study design. Structured
questionnaires were used to collect data. 105 women were selected for the study. Most
of the patients were in the 65 - 69 age group (22%) with 82.7% of the respondents
having moderate awareness levels, 16.3%. 54.87% of the respondents had a moderate
score of self-management practices, 38.5% had a high score of self-management
practices and 6.7% had a low score of self-management practices. It was concluded
from the study that decisions to seek care were influenced by a number of factors
which included signs and symptoms, support from the community, availability of
resources to seek care and services available at the health care facilities. Majority of
the respondents had moderate awareness about diabetic management however this
awareness has not led to any changes in the disease management because patients are
not sufficiently equipped with knowledge to comprehensively manage their disease.
This study recommends that the hospital management should offer diabetes education
at no cost to the patients and provide additional training of the health care providers
working in the diabetes clinic with skills for delivering adequate health education
message tailored to knowledge needs of Type 2 diabetic patients.
