Factors affecting Type 2 Diabetes management amongst out-patient diabetic women aged 50 years and above at Kenyatta National Hospital, Kenya

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.