Elderly Care and Caring for the Disabled

“Disability is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.”

Activities of daily living (ADLs) include personal-care activities such as eating, bathing, dressing, and using the toilet.

Instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) include household chores, shopping, managing medication, climbing stairs, public transport, finances and walking. They can be affected by cognitive impairment.

Frailty in the elderly is described as a state of global impairment of physiological reserves involving multiple organ systems. Frailty manifests as increased vulnerability, impaired capability to withstand intrinsic and environmental stressors, and limited capacity to maintain physiological and psychosocial homeostasis. Frailty is found in 20-30% of the elderly population aged over 75 years and increases with advancing age. It is associated with long-term adverse health-related outcomes such as increased risk of geriatric syndromes, dependency, disability, hospitalisation, institutional placement, and mortality.

The term ‘Elderly’ is applied to those individuals belonging to age 60 years and above, who represent the fastest growing segment of populations throughout the world. The percentage of elderly in developing countries tends to be small, although numbers are often large. In the year 1990, there were more than 280 million people belonging to the age 60 years or over in developing regions of the world, and 58% of the world’s elderly were living in less-developed regions.