This excellent article in the Globe and Mail addresses the issues surrounding falling in the older adult population.
Sandra Martin is author of A Good Death: Making the Most of Our Final Choices, which won the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction in 2017 and was a finalist for both the Donner Prize in Public Policy and the J.W. Dafoe Book Prize.
“Don’t fall,” all the experts say. But I do. Three times in six years. That isn’t a huge number, but each time, I have broken something: my pelvis in 2012, an elbow in 2014 and a shoulder this past autumn.
Although I have always considered myself left-leaning politically, I fall to the right, my dominant side, a tendency that caused some soul-searching in what I now refer to as my denial phase. Despite my protests – I was walking too fast; the pavement was uneven; I tripped over a dog leash – I am now officially a faller.
Falls are a major public-health problem. The World Health Organization estimates there are 646,000 fatal falls each year – only road traffic accidents top falling as the cause of death from an unintentional injury.