Demographic and Health Survey

The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2006-07, launched by the National Institute of Population Studies, is the first survey since 1994 to collect data on maternal and child mortality country-wide. According to a Recorder Report, data on direct and indirect causes of maternal and child mortality will be compiled, with special focus also on pre-delivery and post-delivery complications.
Launched with an initial USAID funding of $1.5 million, the survey is designed to address the monitoring and evaluation needs of maternal health and population welfare programmes in all the four provinces, including Fata and Fana. It will cover a wide range of preventive healthcare issues, including awareness about HIV and AIDS, childhood diseases, particularly in rural areas, child mortality and vaccination coverage rate, aside from data on household socio-economic status and wealth index.
The survey will collect and collate information for policymakers so that corrective measures based on realistic estimates could be initiated. It would be mainly meant to collect reliable and quality data on many health and population welfare indicators relevant to the Millennium Development Goals. Demographic surveys provide useful information on trends in population growth, which can be channelled to suit the country's requirements.
As many as 250 lady maternal health and neonatal morbidity professionals will be deployed to collect statistical data, while another 250 supervisors, interviewers and data compilers will be imparted three-week orientation training to facilitate the job.
Maternal and child health is one of the most neglected sectors in Pakistan. While in the developed countries less than one in 10,000 women succumbs to complications arising out of pregnancy and childbirth, in Pakistan the maternal mortality rate is said to be 500 out of 100,000 births.
This could be due largely to the fact that about 77 percent deliveries in Pakistan take place at home, mostly attended by untrained traditional midwives. Lack of adequate institutional capacity to ensure delivery with quality health services thus remains one of the biggest challenges in Pakistan's health sector.
According to available indicators morbidity and mortality from diarrhea and cough among children remain fairly high in Pakistan. The data further shows that children under five have on an average between five and 12 attacks of diarrhea annually with about the same number of respiratory infections. Further, over 35 percent of children under five are short for their age, over 10 percent are underweight for their height and over half are anaemic.
The indicators provide a disturbing peep into what could become a serious challenge to Pakistan's economy in future. Incidentally, all these indicators are closely linked to poor socio-economic conditions in Pakistan as a result of gross neglect of the social sector for the sake of non-productive expenditures incurred by governments in Pakistan. A healthy and productive population is a crucial prerequisite for economic growth of a country.
The data collected during the demographic and health survey, launched by NIPS, will surely provide valuable indictors, which the policymakers can use to chart out future growth of Pakistan's economy. The areas that need improvement include greater use of evidence as a basis for policy, increased priority to nutrition programmes, measures to reduce neonatal and prenatal mortality, availability of skilled birth attendants, and a clear policy on integrated management of maternal and childhood illnesses.
An analysis of Pakistan's maternal and child health sector would bring out adverse macroeconomic causal influences and deficiencies and in adequacy of resources, etc. A comparative study of the results of earlier surveys and the data collected during the present one can provide useful guidelines to policymakers.