Water, Sanitation, and Malnutrition in Pakistan: Challenge for Sustainable Development

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the water, sanitation, and malnutrition situation in Pakistan and to evaluate the sustainable development goals situation. To find the association, this study applies a chi-square test utilizing a sample of 3,575 children of age less than five years, extracted from the data of Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18. The results of chi-square show that underweight and stunting have a significant association with water and sanitation in Pakistan. Pakistan's progress in sustainable development goals is yet slow, especially targets of goal 3 and goal 6, which are far behind other countries of the region. The study concludes that there is a need to allocate more resources in programs such as water, sanitation, nutrition, and poverty reduction to uplift the socio-economic standard of the common folk.

Distance to Healthcare Facility and Lady Health Workers’ Visits Reduce Malnutrition in under Five Children: A Case Study of a Disadvantaged Rural District in Pakistan

“…There is evidence that amongst the richer and richest families, the prevalence of malnutrition was the lowest [40,41]. Some recent studies from the same region also show that household socioeconomic deprivation (HDS) strongly contributed to child malnutrition, and malnutrition decreased with a decrease in deprivation status [42][43][44][45][46][47].…”

Impact of Drinking Water Source and Sanitation Facility on Malnutrition Prevalence in Children under Three: A Gender-Disaggregated Analysis Using PDHS 2017–18

“…The results illustrated that households with improved drinking water sources had lower chances of malnutrition only in male children whereas an improved sanitation facility had lower chances of malnutrition only in female children. According to a study conducted in Pakistan, sanitation and water are closely related to malnutrition in Pakistan and there is little improvement in sanitation and water in the SAARC regions [ 58 ]. Previous studies have depicted that male children are at a higher risk of contracting schistosomiasis (water-borne disease) and stunting because of unimproved water [ 32 , 59 , 60 ].…”

Improved Drinking Water, Healthier Children? Evidence from Pakistan

“…[ Figure 1] There is some empirical evidence at the individual or household level for a relationship between access to improved drinking water and child health outcomes in Pakistan (Murtaza et al, 2015;Saheed et al, 2021Saheed et al, , 2022Zahid, 2018). Murtaza et al (2015) found lack of clean water to be an important determinant of diarrhoea among Pakistani children.…”

“…In another study, Zahid (2018) find the impact of lack of clean water availability on the prevalence of water borne diseases in Pakistan. Similarly, two studies by Saheed et al (2021Saheed et al ( , 2022) examined household-level data from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18 and found a significant association between the household's drinking water source and child malnutrition. There is also some evidence for improvement in access to drinking water and children's later life outcomes in Pakistan.…”