Aging & Social Change: Ninth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Declining fertility rates, lower infant mortality, and increasing survival at ageing people are the reasons behind the population ageing. According to WHO by the 2050, one in five people will be 60 years or older. The main purpose of this study is to describe the status of health service utilization among elderly people. A community based cross-sectional study adopted both qualitative and quantitative research design. A sample of 422 household elderly was selected by multistage cluster sampling between June 2018 and January 2019. Information was collected for quantitative information applied interviewer administrated semi-structured interview schedule and for quantitative component used FGD guidelines and KII guidelines. Data entered in EPI Data panel sheet and analyzed in IBM SPSS Version17. The technique of identified themes was adopted for analysis of qualitative data. The prevalence of health service utilization was 81.2 percent. While both elderly and service provider agreed that health service utilization affected by age related factor, access to health services, quality of health care services, mistreatment of elderly and wealth status of elderly. This study suggests that it is high time to make interventions for active ageing programs through government channels, re-strengthen the government health care delivery system in elderly arena through trained the existing health service providers, and produce and design elderly health care programs with implications for policy making.