Deafness or hearing loss is the fifth most common long-term or chronic health condition in Australians, a new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has revealed.
Australia’s health 2024 found that an estimated 3.9 million people – one in six Australians or 15.5% of the population – were living with a chronic ear problem in 2022.
The most common ear condition was complete or partial deafness which affected 2.4 million people (9.6% of the population.)
The institute’s 19th biennial health report, released yesterday on 2 July 2024, said deafness or hearing loss was ranked fifth out of 72 selected long-term health conditions. Anxiety topped the list at 4.8 million people (18.9%) followed by back problems (4 million people, 15.7%); depression (3.2 million people, 12.4%) and asthma (2.8 million people, 10.8%).
But for our First Nations people, ear and hearing issues ranked higher in the list of chronic health problems that lasted more than six months. Ear/hearing problems were the third most reported long-time health condition in First Nations people in 2018–2019 behind eye/sight problems and asthma. This translated to 114,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders having ear/hearing problems or 14% of the Indigenous population.
Overall, long-term ear conditions were naturally more common in older people: half (49.5%) of people aged 75 and over self-reported having these conditions compared with 2.8% of those aged 0–14.
And while 61% of the population or 15.4 million people had one long-term health condition in 2022, 38% or 9.7 million had two or more conditions.
Big jumps in dementia, and health workforce
The report predicted the number of Australians with dementia would more than double by 2058 to 849,300 people.
“In 2023, dementia was the second leading cause of disease burden overall, and the leading cause of burden for people aged 65 and over,” it stated. “In 2022, dementia was the second leading cause of death overall (9% of deaths), and the leading cause of death among Australians aged 65 and over.”
Large increases in the health workforce were also recorded.
In 2022, the registered health workforce made up 5% of the total employed workforce and included 180,900 allied health professionals.
Between 2013 and 2022, the number of registered healthcare professionals actively working in their field in Australia increased by 37% (184,000 professionals). This was faster than growth in the total number of people who were employed over the same period (21%).
Two in five people used subsidised allied health in 2022–2023 with 39% of Australians having at least one Medicare-subsidised allied health attendance.
