Age-Sex Profile

This graph shows the number of patients of each sex registered, in age group categories.

There are more girls than boys, at both preschool and school ages - no idea why!

There is the expected dip in registrations in young adults - this is partly because they go away to study and work but also because they are healthy and don't bother to register when they move to Swaffham.

Then there is the mid-life bulge and the decline in numbers with age, the men dying off about 5 years before the women on average.

Trend

This shows the number of patients registered, categorised by sex and age (over and under 75), year by year.

Older People

It looks, from the graph above, as if the proportion of older people registered is rising. This is indeed the case.

Some older people joined us when the Plowright Surgery moved out of the town centre and they were unable to walk to their surgery anymore.

It does not look, from our death statistics, as if people have been living longer since 2001 so the most probable cause for this trend is the increase in size and number of the residential homes in Swaffham in recent years.