Common diseases seen in Lanyu Township's elderly people

　　Currently, the most common diseases seen in LanyuTownship’s elderly people are “lower back pain” and “degenerative arthritis”.Naturally, the causes of these two diseases are related to the elderly people’s lifestyle habits and work conditions when they were younger, though clearly there are also degenerations in other organs and bodily functions.Due to misguided traditional beliefs, such as, the sick elderly person will pressurize children’s souls, or that, the evil spirits will begin to surround them etc, often when the elderly people’s mobility becomes limited they would receive inadequate care, thus the sick elderly people would have to take care of themselves.Some elderly people even believe that they may harm the children and will isolate themselves in little houses next to their homes once they become ill, therefore their diseases would not be properly treated, which when combined with their poor mobility and anorexia, will worsen their conditions and even cause death.

Causes of Diseases

　　Currently LanyuTownship can be defined to have an elderly society by WHO's guideline (≧7%), with some villages even qualifying for geriatric society (≧10%).But whether Taiwan or Lanyu, the ageing population structure will be an important issue that we will face.The overall care for the elderly people is also a standard to determine whether the society respects “people”.

　　The elderly workers in Lanyu mostly maintain the traditional lifestyle, therefore if they are able to walk, the akey’s (grandpas) are still used to fishing or picking plants while the akers (grandmas) are still used to farming potatoes and eddoes from the fields.Yet it is because they have been working like this since they were young adults that, when they grew older they had developed many diseases, which have causes that are intimately related to lifestyle and dietary habits.

　　According to the statistics from the Department of Health, since 1998 the causes of death on Lanyu Island, other than dying naturally of age, in recent years “cancer” was the major cause of death, especially during the past 3 years.Cancer has for 3 years consecutively stayed at the top as the primary cause of death of the elderly people in LanyuTownship.This result was surprising to many, and the associated departments have begun to investigate the cause-and-effect relationship between “living environment” and “cancer” in order to protect our health.