Introduction:

The family is responsible for the care of the elderly, giving rise to the informal caregiver.

Objective:

To describe the self-care of the informal caregiver of the elderly in some Latin American countries.

Methodology:

Descriptive review, on the following databases: PubMed, Scopus, SciELO, Web of Science, Redalyc and Dialnet; analyzing full-text scientific articles of the last 13 years (2009-2022) in Spanish, English and Portuguese. Complementary documents related to the subject were searched on Web pages of national institutions of Latin American countries.

Results:

The analysis of the 25 scientific articles and 4 selected documents allowed to identify 4 axes: concepts of care, caregiver and types of caregivers; health of the informal caregiver of the elderly; theoretical basis of self-care and implementation of programs to care for the caregiver in some Latin American countries.

Conclusions:

It is evident that the self-care of caregivers of older people is decreased, directly affecting the health of this. Several Latin American countries support the informal caregiver, however, there is still much to be done for caregivers.

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