Projections of disability consequences in Indonesia.

With the populations in many developing countries growing older due to declining fertility and infant mortality, there is concern that chronic disease and disability will rapidly increase in prevalence. Such an increase could create a conflict of priorities in developing countries with scarce public health resources between, the continuing need for infectious disease and infant mortality programs, and an emerging need to deal with the health, and health related social problems of adult and elderly populations. To assess the potential magnitude of the emerging problems of chronic disease and disability - and to assess when those needs are likely to emerge - we present projections of chronic disability and its sequelae using data from a large Indonesian survey focusing on the prevalence of impairments and handicaps as envisaged in the WHO (1980) ICIDH classification.