Prevalence and types of elder abuse in Sub Saharan Africa, systematic review and meta-analysis, 2023.

BACKGROUND

Elder abuse is a single or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, which causes harm to an older person. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to assess the prevalence of elder abuse in Sub Saharan Africa.

METHODS

This systematic review and meta-analysis involved a comprehensive search of electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, African Journals Online and Google Scholar. Cochrane I statistics and Eggers test with funnel plot were done to check heterogeneity and publication bias, respectively.

RESULT

Five studies with 2123 elderly people aged 60 and above were included in this review. The pooled prevalence of elder abuse was (46.73 % (45.08-48.38)) with a substantial level of heterogeneity (I2 =99.7 %; p < 0.001). To overcome the effect of high level heterogeneity subgroup analysis was deployed. Accordingly, the subgroup analysis by publication year revealed that the prevalence of elder abuse was highest among studies conducted after 2018 (64.034 (95 % CI: 12.66, 115.4). Similarly, sub-group analysis by country revealed that the prevalence of elder abuse was highest in Ethiopia (63.2(21.276, 105.124).The subgroup analysis by the sampling technique revealed that elder abuse was highest among studies conducted using systematic random sampling technique (84.57 (95 % CI: 79.22, 89.92). Subgroup analysis by type of abuse revealed that physical abuse was highest (29.27 (-7.854, 66.394)) CONCLUSION: The pooled prevalence of elder abuse was high and, physical abuse was the commonest type of abuse. As a result, there should be awareness creation about the caring of elders to minimize abuse.