Pakistan performs badly on mother-child health targets

Islamabad: Pakistan is far behind neighbouring and nearby Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Bangladesh and Tajikistan, on fundamental mother and child health targets, claims a major global study published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal.

Researchers from the Aga Khan University, Karachi, the Centre for Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Toronto, analysed data from 1990 to 2015 relating to 75 high-burden countries across the world with a specific focus on rates and drivers of change in the Islamic world.

Their findings have been published in the Lancet paper, "Status and drivers of maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health in the Islamic world: a comparative analysis." The study found Pakistan to be in the second-worst performing group of countries on reducing the deaths of children under the age of five.

Pakistan has also made far slower progress in reducing maternal mortality than other developing countries in South and Central Asia. The researchers found no indication that religion per se had a direct impact on health outcomes and pointed to issues such as conflict, migration, political instability, government effectiveness, literacy, and female empowerment as key drivers of differences in maternal and child mortality.

“While rates of maternal and child mortality are generally higher in Muslim-majority countries such as Pakistan, there are also several success stories,” said lead author Professor Zulfiqar A Bhutta, founding director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health at the AKU. “Major successes, especially in child mortality reductions, have been achieved in child mortality in Niger, Maldives, Morocco, Azerbaijan, Senegal, Bangladesh and Egypt.”