Mixed diagnosis in Mayo health figures in 2016 Census

Anton McNulty

The number of people in Mayo who are in bad health has decreased according to the latest Census figures but the figure is still ahead of the national average.
The Central Statistics Office released the latest figures from Census 2016 with this month’s profile focusing on Health, Disability and Carers. The figures found that 86.2 percent of the Mayo population stated their health was good/very good with 73,137 people or 56 percent stating it was ‘very good’ while 30.2 percent stated it was was ‘good’. This compared to 55.7 percent who stated ‘very good’ and 30.8 percent who stated ‘good’ in Census 2011.
The Census also revealed that there was a 4.8 percent decrease on the number of people who stated that their health was ‘bad/very bad’ in the 2011 Census. The latest figures showed that 2,303 people or 1.8 percent placed their health status in this category which was above the national average of 1.6 percent.
At national level, 87 percent of the population felt they had good or very good health, down slightly from 2011 when it was 88.3 percent. Nearly six in ten or 59.5 percent of men felt their health was very good, compared with 59.3 percent of women.
The census results also show the decline in general health with age, with 79 percent of 15 to 19 year olds in very good health, compared with 58.6 percent of those aged 40 to 44 and 31.3 percent of the 65 to 69 age group.
Almost nine out of ten or 89.9 percent of people in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown indicated their health was very good/good - the highest in the country. It was followed by Meath (89.6 percent) and Kildare and Cork County (89.5 percent). Dublin City had the lowest percentage at 82.8 percent, with Cork City and Longford the next lowest at 83.6 percent and 85.3 percent respectively.

Disabilities
In terms of people with disabilities, Mayo was also above the national average with 17,977 people with at least one disability which makes up 13.8 percent of the county’s population. Of these, 8,769 (48.8 percent) were male and 9,208 (51.2 percent) were female. The national average of people with a disability is 13.5 percent. In 2011, the 17,710 people with at least one disability comprised 13.6 percent of Mayo’s population.
In Mayo, 8,379 people indicated that they had ‘a difficulty with pain, breathing, or any other chronic illness or condition’, while 1,571 indicated they had blindness or a serious visual impairment and 3,124 had deafness or a serious hearing impairment.
The 6,129 people who stated that they ‘provided regular unpaid personal help for a friend or family member with a long-term illness, health problem or disability’ comprised 4.7 percent of the county’s population in April 2016. This was a decrease of 429 people or 6.5 percent on 2011. The national average is 4.1 percent while the Connacht average is 4.4 percent.
Of the carers in the county, 3,670 were female (59.9 percent), and 2,459 were male (40.1 percent). There were 105 carers aged under 15 years, compared with 146 in 2011.