Changes in the health status of the Hungarian Defence Forces in an ageing society

Abstract

The continuous collection, monitoring, and analysis of morbidity data enable health professionals to plan the capacity of the care system, to organise and optimise care, to measure the burden of diseases resulting from each morbidity, and to estimate its expected evolution. In our study, we analyse the data of patient flow reports for the period 2011 to 2020 for the healing and preventive basic service defined as the basic task of the primary health care system (troop health service) of the Hungarian Defence Forces. Over 850,000 doctor-patient encounters over the ten-year period were mostly due to some form of acute care need, infection, and respiratory illness. The morbidity structure has not changed significantly over the period. In all cases, the top three were diseases of the respiratory system (J00-J99), diseases of the circulatory system (I00-I99), as well as musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases (M00-M99). In 2020, the highest number of people with restrictions for health reasons in the period under review was 131 for diseases of the circulatory system and 179 for musculoskeletal disorders. In recent years, the time spent on medical leave or on sick leave has increased significantly in terms of the number of cases of incapacity to work. Accurate knowledge of morbidity and health data can also provide the military leadership with important information on combat fitness, especially when the ever-increasing task load (mission activity, border tasks, Covid-19) has to be met by an armed corps selected from an ageing population.