The Australian Bureau of Statistics has issued a Health Literacy report as part of it's latest issue of Australia's Social Trends. Health literacy is the ability of consumers to access and use health information, and it is an important skill in allowing people to maintain their basic health. "Adequate levels of health literacy may help to reduce some of the costs in the health system, prevent illness and chronic disease, and reduce the rates of accident and death."
The report is the result of a survey conducted in 2006, which showed that 41% of adults were considered to have at least adequate health literacy skills. 19% of adults had the lowest level of these skills, meaning that they had difficulty with tasks such as locating information on a bottle of medicine about the maximum number of days the medicine could be taken, or drawing a line on a container indicating where one-third would be. Older and less well-educated people had a lower level of health literacy.
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