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Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Poverty and inequality in health is pervasive in Pakistan. The provisions and conditions of health are very dismal. A significant proportion of the population (16.34%) of Pakistan is under 5 years, but Pakistan is in the bottom 5% of countries in the world in terms of spend...

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Autores principales: Murtaza, Fowad, Mustafa, Tajammal, Awan, Rabia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558739/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26392798
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2230-8229.163036
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author Murtaza, Fowad
Mustafa, Tajammal
Awan, Rabia
author_facet Murtaza, Fowad
Mustafa, Tajammal
Awan, Rabia
author_sort Murtaza, Fowad
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Poverty and inequality in health is pervasive in Pakistan. The provisions and conditions of health are very dismal. A significant proportion of the population (16.34%) of Pakistan is under 5 years, but Pakistan is in the bottom 5% of countries in the world in terms of spending on health and education. It is ranked the lowest in the world with sub-Sahara Africa in terms of child health equality. The objective of this study was to examine child health inequalities in Pakistan. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed data from Pakistan Integrated Household Survey/Household Integrated Economic Survey 2001–2002, collected by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Government of Pakistan. Coverage of diarrhea and immunization were used as indicators of child health. Stata 11.0 was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics including frequency distribution and proportions for categorical variables and mean for continuous variables were computed. RESULTS: Children under 5 years of age account for about 16.34% of the total population, 11.76% (2.5 million) of whom suffered from diarrhea in 1-month. The average duration of a diarrheal episode was 7 days. About 72% of the children who had diarrhea lived in a house without pipe-borne water supply. Around 22% children who had diarrhea had no advice or treatment. More than one-third of the households had no toilet in the house, and only 29% of the households were connected with pipe-borne drinking water. About 7.73% (1.6 million) children had never been immunized. The main reason for nonimmunization was parents’ lack of knowledge and of immunization. CONCLUSION: Child health inequalities in Pakistan are linked with several factors such as severe poverty, illiteracy, lack of knowledge, and awareness of child healthcare, singularly inadequate provision of health services, and poor infrastructure.
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spelling pubmed-45587392015-09-21 Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan Murtaza, Fowad Mustafa, Tajammal Awan, Rabia J Family Community Med Original Article BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Poverty and inequality in health is pervasive in Pakistan. The provisions and conditions of health are very dismal. A significant proportion of the population (16.34%) of Pakistan is under 5 years, but Pakistan is in the bottom 5% of countries in the world in terms of spending on health and education. It is ranked the lowest in the world with sub-Sahara Africa in terms of child health equality. The objective of this study was to examine child health inequalities in Pakistan. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed data from Pakistan Integrated Household Survey/Household Integrated Economic Survey 2001–2002, collected by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, Government of Pakistan. Coverage of diarrhea and immunization were used as indicators of child health. Stata 11.0 was used for data analysis. Descriptive statistics including frequency distribution and proportions for categorical variables and mean for continuous variables were computed. RESULTS: Children under 5 years of age account for about 16.34% of the total population, 11.76% (2.5 million) of whom suffered from diarrhea in 1-month. The average duration of a diarrheal episode was 7 days. About 72% of the children who had diarrhea lived in a house without pipe-borne water supply. Around 22% children who had diarrhea had no advice or treatment. More than one-third of the households had no toilet in the house, and only 29% of the households were connected with pipe-borne drinking water. About 7.73% (1.6 million) children had never been immunized. The main reason for nonimmunization was parents’ lack of knowledge and of immunization. CONCLUSION: Child health inequalities in Pakistan are linked with several factors such as severe poverty, illiteracy, lack of knowledge, and awareness of child healthcare, singularly inadequate provision of health services, and poor infrastructure. Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd 2015 /pmc/articles/PMC4558739/ /pubmed/26392798 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2230-8229.163036 Text en Copyright: © Journal of Family and Community Medicine http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Murtaza, Fowad
Mustafa, Tajammal
Awan, Rabia
Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title_full Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title_fullStr Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title_full_unstemmed Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title_short Child health inequalities and its dimensions in Pakistan
title_sort child health inequalities and its dimensions in pakistan
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4558739/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26392798
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/2230-8229.163036
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