Health systems readiness to provide geriatric friendly care services in Uganda: a cross-sectional study

Ssensamba, JT, Mukuru, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2139-6679, Nakafeero, M, Ssenyonga, R and Kiwanuka, SN, 2019. Health systems readiness to provide geriatric friendly care services in Uganda: a cross-sectional study. BMC Geriatrics, 19: 256. ISSN 1471-2318

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Abstract

Background: As ageing emerges as the next public health threat in Africa, there is a paucity of information on how prepared its health systems are to provide geriatric friendly care services. In this study, we explored the readiness of Uganda’s public health system to offer geriatric friendly care services in Southern Central Uganda.

Methods: Four districts with the highest proportion of old persons in Southern Central Uganda were purposively selected, and a cross-section of 18 randomly selected health facilities (HFs) were visited and assessed for availability of critical items deemed important for provision of geriatric friendly services; as derived from World Health Organization’s Age-friendly primary health care centres toolkit. Data was collected using an adapted health facility geriatric assessment tool, entered into Epi-data software and analysed using STATA version 14. Kruskal-Wallis and Dunn’s post hoc tests were conducted to determine any associations between readiness, health facility level, and district.

Results: The overall readiness index was 16.92 (SD ±4.19) (range 10.8–26.6). This differed across districts; Lwengo 17.91 (SD ±3.15), Rakai 17.63 (SD ±4.55), Bukomansimbi 16.51 (SD ±7.18), Kalungu 13.74 (SD ±2.56) and facility levels; Hospitals 26.62, Health centers four (HCIV) 20.05 and Health centers three (HCIII) 14.80. Low readiness was due to poor scores concerning; leadership (0%), financing (0%), human resources (1.7%) and health management information systems (HMIS) (11.8%) WHO building blocks. Higher-level HFs were statistically significantly friendlier than lower-level HFs (p = 0.015). The difference in readiness between HCIIIs and HCIVs was 2.39 (p = 0.025).

Conclusion: There is a low readiness for public health facilities to provide geriatric friendly care services in Uganda. This is due to gaps in all of the health system building blocks. There is a need for health system reforms in Uganda to adequately cater for service provision for older adults if the 2020 global healthy ageing goal is to be met.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Geriatrics
Creators:	Ssensamba, J.T., Mukuru, M., Nakafeero, M., Ssenyonga, R. and Kiwanuka, S.N.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	2019
Volume:	19
ISSN:	1471-2318
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s12877-019-1272-2 DOI 1866927 Other
Rights:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	28 Feb 2024 08:49
Last Modified:	28 Feb 2024 08:49
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/50967

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