Health Care System of Pakistan: A Critical Overview of Maternal and Infant Mortality

Abstract

Pakistan is a developing country and facing a lot of social problems, issues and challenges to meet its development goals in which maternal and infant mortality has become a great challenge for Pakistan. The objectives of the present research are to identify the causal factors of maternal and infant mortality and under-5 mortality trends in Pakistan. The approach of the present research study is to assess the healthcare system of Pakistan mainly focusing on maternal
and infant mortality trends in Pakistan. The criteria for selecting the relevant papers involved an in-depth search within the peer-reviewed journals and high-impact factor journals publications through a snowball sampling technique and data is collected from secondary sources that include World Health Organisation reports, Ministry of Health Pakistan fact sheets, Demographic surveys of Pakistan, PDHS, UNICEF, MDG’S database and other cited literature on the concerned topic. Results of Pakistan economic survey 2018-19, Pakistan has also shown improvement in the infant mortality rate of 57.2/1000 from 66 per thousand in 2015 but unfortunately its the highest among the regional countries. In Pakistan, the skilled birth attendance ratio is about 18.8% followed up by pregnant women.
Health indicators of Pakistan are very alarming among the south Asian regional countries and the poor public health care system in Pakistan has negative effects on its people related to the infant, maternal mortality, infectious diseases, and child health.