Pakistan's estimated population (excluding the disputed areas of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan) was 207,774,520 according to the provisional results of the 2017 Census of Pakistan. [1] [2] [3] Pakistan is the world's fifth-most-populous country.
Majority of the population are part of the youth age bracket: in 2019, 34.8% were thought to be 14 or younger, though in 1990 this had been much higher at 43.7%. [4] In 2010, the figure for those aged 24 or less was 62.19%. [5]
Many young Pakistanis are affected by serious issues around education in Pakistan; only 68% of Pakistani children finish primary school education [6] and Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. [7] Other areas with significant issues include: child marriage in Pakistan, child labour in Pakistan, street children, malnutrition, and health problems.
Unemployment poses an escalating concern in Pakistan. With a population exceeding 220 million and a workforce of approximately 65 million, the country faces challenges in offering an adequate number of job opportunities for its citizens. This issue is particularly acute for the youth, who constitute roughly 60% of the population and confront an unemployment rate of approximately 10%. [8]
Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan obligates the state to provide free and compulsory quality education to children of the age group of 5 to 16 years. "The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such a manner as may be determined by law". [9]
Pakistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world [7] and the second largest out of school population (22.8 million children) [10] after Nigeria. Only 68% of Pakistani children finish primary school education. [11]
The practice of child marriage is prevalent in Pakistan, with the highest prevalence in the Sindh province. It disproportionately affects the daughter of a Pakistani family. [12] Defined as marriage before the age of 18 years, child marriage is widespread in Pakistan and linked to spousal violence. [13] Child marriage occurs most often in rural and low-income households where education is minimal. [13] The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey conducted from 2012 to 2013 reported that 47.5% of currently married women aged 15 to 24 had been married before the age of 18. [13] Moreover, of those child marriages, one-third of those women reported spousal violence. [13] [14] [15] Another UNICEF report claims 70% of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 16. [16] As with India and Africa, the UNICEF data for Pakistan is from a small sample survey in the 1990s.
The exact number of child marriages in Pakistan below the age of 13 is unknown, but rising according to the United Nations. [17]
Another custom in Pakistan, called swara or vani, involves village elders solving family disputes or settling unpaid debts by marrying off girls. The average marriage age of swara girls is between 5 and 9. [16] [18] Similarly, the custom of watta satta has been cited [19] as a cause of child marriages in Pakistan.
According to Population Council, 35% of all females in Pakistan become mothers before they reach the age of 18, and 67% have experienced pregnancy – 69% of these have given birth – before they reach the age of 19. [20] Less than 4% of married girls below the age of 19 had some say in choosing her spouse; over 80% were married to a near or distant relative. Child marriage and early motherhood are common in Pakistan. [21]
Pakistan's major cities and urban centers are home to an estimated 1.2 million street children. This includes beggars and scavengers who are often very young. The law and order problem worsens their condition as boys and girls are fair game to others who would force them into stealing, scavenging, and smuggling to survive. A large proportion consumes readily available solvents to stave off hunger, loneliness, and fear. Children are vulnerable to contracting STDs such as HIV/AIDS, as well as other diseases. [22] The number of street children in Pakistan is estimated to be between 1.2 million [23] [24] and 1.5 million. [25] Issues like domestic violence, unemployment, natural disasters, poverty, unequal industrialization, unplanned rapid urbanization, family disintegration, and lack of education are considered the major factors behind the increase in the number of street children. Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) carried out a study which presented 56.5% of the children interviewed in Multan, 82.2% in Karachi, 80.5% in Hyderabad, and 83.3% in Sukkur were forced to move on to the streets after the 2010 and 2011 floods. [26]
Child labour in Pakistan is the employment of children for work in Pakistan, which causes them mental, physical, moral, and social harm. [27] The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that in the 1990s, 11 million children were working in the country, half of whom were under age ten. In 1996, the median age for a child entering the work force was seven, down from eight in 1994. It was estimated that one quarter of the country's work force was made up of children. [28]
Domestic violence leads to increased risk towards certain health outcomes like major depression, dysthymia, conduct disorder, and drug abuse. [29] Moreover, because women are primary caretakers in Pakistan, children also face increased risk for depression and behavioural problems. [30]
Malnutrition is one of the most significant public health problems in Pakistan, and especially among children. According to UNICEF, about half of children are chronically malnourished. [31] National surveys show that for almost three decades, the rates of stunting and acute undernutrition in children under five years of age have remained stagnant, at 45% and 16%, respectively. [32] Additionally, at the “national level almost 40% of these children are underweight...and about 9% [are affected] by wasting”, diseases where muscle and fat tissues degenerate as a result of malnutrition. [33] Similarly, women are also at risk, with about half suffering from anemia, which is commonly caused by iron deficiency. [34]
Depression often starts at a young age and affects women more commonly than men. [35] One or two mothers out of 10 have depression after childbirth. Depression also limits a mother's capacity to care for her child, and can seriously affect the child's growth and development. A study showed that exposure to maternal mental distress is associated with malnutrition in 9‐month infants in urban Pakistan. [36]
Pakistan is one of the two remaining countries [37] [38] in the world where poliomyelitis (polio) is still categorized as an endemic viral infection, [39] the other country being Afghanistan. [37] As of 20 July 2020, there have been 60 documented cases in Pakistan in 2020, and 146 documented cases in Pakistan in 2019. [40] [41] The total count of wild poliovirus cases in Pakistan in 2018 was 12. [42] By 1991, only 83% of Pakistani children had been vaccinated. [43] Research by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in April 1998 cited a failure to vaccinate, vaccine failure, and inadequate immunization strategies as causes for the continued incidents of polio in this time. [44] Reasons for under-vaccination included the population being uninformed, considering vaccination unimportant, and having to travel long distances to vaccination sites. [44]
In March 2001, about 27 million children were vaccinated across the country in the hope that Pakistan could be virus-free by the end of that year. [45] As of 2004, when there were 30 million children in Pakistan under five, about 200,000 health workers were required for a vaccination campaign that was carried out eight times a year. [46] A documentary, Polio True Stories, was aired on several television channels to make people aware of the problems facing people affected by the disease. [47] In August 2015, the country launched an injectable polio vaccine intended to treat four million children and bring Pakistan closer to its goal of eradication by 2016. [48] While the new vaccine is pricier than the traditional oral polio vaccine (OPV) and requires that a doctor or nurse administer it, the injection needs only one dose, not repeated doses, to generate immunity. [48]
It has been shown that low parental - specifically, maternal - literacy and knowledge regarding vaccines and immunization schedules, poor socioeconomic status, and residence in rural areas all are attributable to decreased rates of immunization completion. [49] Parental education is one of the most important determiners of whether children will complete their vaccinations. In a study of two-parent households in Pakistan, it was shown that the father's knowledge about health most impacted immunization decisions, with an effect so large that some researchers contend improving education will improve health more than even the provision of health services. [50] Widespread malnutrition in Pakistani children is a factor in lowered resistance to disabling diseases and reduced efficacy of the polio vaccine. [51]
Polio has had drastic effects on the health of the population of Pakistan and on the nation's healthcare infrastructure and economy. The WHO estimates that 65–75% of polio cases in developing countries occur in children under 3 years of age, with 95% of all cases occurring in children under 5 years of age. [52] Researchers at the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University quantified the disease burden of various diseases in Pakistan; in the year 1990, a Pakistani person with polio averaged a loss of 1.13 healthy life years to the disease. [53] The duration of disability of polio, averaged over 1000 people, was 81.84 years, the equivalent of diseases including diphtheria, childhood meningitis, and measles. [53]
Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 75% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe symptoms develop such as headache, neck stiffness, and paresthesia. These symptoms usually pass within one or two weeks. A less common symptom is permanent paralysis, and possible death in extreme cases. Years after recovery, post-polio syndrome may occur, with a slow development of muscle weakness similar to what the person had during the initial infection.
Vaccination is the administration of a vaccine to help the immune system develop immunity from a disease. Vaccines contain a microorganism or virus in a weakened, live or killed state, or proteins or toxins from the organism. In stimulating the body's adaptive immunity, they help prevent sickness from an infectious disease. When a sufficiently large percentage of a population has been vaccinated, herd immunity results. Herd immunity protects those who may be immunocompromised and cannot get a vaccine because even a weakened version would harm them. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified. Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the elimination of diseases such as polio and tetanus from much of the world. However, some diseases, such as measles outbreaks in America, have seen rising cases due to relatively low vaccination rates in the 2010s – attributed, in part, to vaccine hesitancy. According to the World Health Organization, vaccination prevents 3.5–5 million deaths per year.
Polio vaccines are vaccines used to prevent poliomyelitis (polio). Two types are used: an inactivated poliovirus given by injection (IPV) and a weakened poliovirus given by mouth (OPV). The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends all children be fully vaccinated against polio. The two vaccines have eliminated polio from most of the world, and reduced the number of cases reported each year from an estimated 350,000 in 1988 to 33 in 2018.
Pulse Polio is an immunisation campaign established by the government of India to eliminate poliomyelitis (polio) in India by vaccinating all children under the age of five years against the polio virus. The project fights polio through a large-scale, pulse vaccination programme and monitoring for poliomyelitis cases.
Child mortality is the death of children under the age of five. The child mortality rate refers to the probability of dying between birth and exactly five years of age expressed per 1,000 live births.
Polio eradication, the goal of permanent global cessation of circulation of the poliovirus and hence elimination of the poliomyelitis (polio) it causes, is the aim of a multinational public health effort begun in 1988, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Rotary Foundation. These organizations, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The Gates Foundation, have spearheaded the campaign through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Successful eradication of infectious diseases has been achieved twice before, with smallpox in humans and rinderpest in ruminants.
The Expanded Program on Immunization(EPI) in the Philippines began in 1976 through Presidential Decree No. 996 signed by President Ferdinand Marcos. And, in 1986, made a response to the Universal Child Immunization goal. The four major strategies include:
A vaccination policy is a health policy adopted in order to prevent the spread of infectious disease. These policies are generally put into place by state or local governments, but may also be set by private facilities, such as workplaces or schools. Many policies have been developed and implemented since vaccines were first made widely available.
Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world with population approaching 225 million. It is a developing country struggling in many domains due to which the health system has suffered a lot. As a result of that, Pakistan is ranked 122nd out of 190 countries in the World Health Organization performance report.
Mali, one of the world's poorest nations, is greatly affected by poverty, malnutrition, epidemics, and inadequate hygiene and sanitation. Mali's health and development indicators rank among the worst in the world, with little improvement over the last 20 years. Progress is impeded by Mali's poverty and by a lack of physicians. The 2012 conflict in northern Mali exacerbated difficulties in delivering health services to refugees living in the north. With a landlocked, agricultural-based economy, Mali is highly vulnerable to climate change. A catastrophic harvest in 2023 together with escalations in armed conflict have exacerbated food insecurity in Northern and Central Mali.
The Expanded Program on Immunization is a global health initiative launched by the World Health Organization in May 1974, with the aim to make vaccines available to all globally
Life expectancy in France at birth was 81 years in 2008. A new measure of expected human capital calculated for 195 countries from 1990 to 2016 and defined for each birth cohort as the expected years lived from age 20 to 64 years and adjusted for educational attainment, learning or education quality, and functional health status was published by the Lancet in September 2018. France had the ninth highest level of expected human capital with 25 health, education, and learning-adjusted expected years lived between age 20 and 64 years.
Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is a vaccination programme launched by the Government of India in 1985. It became a part of Child Survival and Safe Motherhood Programme in 1992 and is currently one of the key areas under the National Health Mission since 2005. The programme now consists of vaccination for 12 diseases- tuberculosis, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, measles, hepatitis B, rotaviral gastroenteritis, Japanese encephalitis, rubella, pneumonia and Pneumococcal diseases. Hepatitis B and Pneumococcal diseases were added to the UIP in 2007 and 2017 respectively. The cost of all the vaccines are borne entirely by the Government of India and is funded through taxes with a budget of ₹7,234 crore (US$870 million) in 2022 and the program covers all residents of India, including foreign residents.
Pakistan is one of the two remaining countries in the world where poliomyelitis (polio) is still categorized as an endemic viral infection, the other one being Afghanistan. While it has yet to fully eradicate Polio, there has been a major downwards trend in the number of reported cases per year; the total count of wild poliovirus cases in Pakistan in 2019 was down to 147, compared to 84 in 2020, 1 in 2021, 20 in 2022, 6 in 2023 and 41 as of October 2024.
Targeted immunization strategies are approaches designed to increase the immunization level of populations and decrease the chances of epidemic outbreaks. Though often in regards to use in healthcare practices and the administration of vaccines to prevent biological epidemic outbreaks, these strategies refer in general to immunization schemes in complex networks, biological, social or artificial in nature. Identification of at-risk groups and individuals with higher odds of spreading the disease often plays an important role in these strategies, since targeted immunization in high-risk groups is necessary for effective eradication efforts and has a higher return on investment than immunizing larger but lower-risk groups.
Non-specific effects of vaccines are effects which go beyond the specific protective effects against the targeted diseases. Non-specific effects can be strongly beneficial by increasing protection against non-targeted infections. This has been shown with two live attenuated vaccines, BCG vaccine and measles vaccine, through multiple randomized controlled trials. Theoretically, non-specific effects of vaccines may be detrimental, increasing overall mortality despite providing protection against the target diseases. Although observational studies suggest that diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTP) may be highly detrimental, these studies are at high risk of bias and have failed to replicate when conducted by independent groups.
The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is an initiative created in 1988, just after the World Health Assembly resolved to eradicate the disease poliomyelitis. Led by the World Health Organization, it is the largest international public health initiative in history.
Vaccine shedding is a form of viral shedding which can occasionally occur following a viral infection caused by an attenuated vaccine. Illness in others resulting from transmission through this type of viral shedding is rare. Most vaccines are not attenuated vaccines, and therefore cannot cause vaccine-induced viral shedding, though the idea of shedding is a popular anti-vaccination myth.
DTaP-IPV-HepB vaccine is a combination vaccine whose generic name is diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis adsorbed, hepatitis B (recombinant) and inactivated polio vaccine or DTaP-IPV-Hep B. It protects against the infectious diseases diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, poliomyelitis, and hepatitis B.
The World Health Organization (WHO) created the Global Commission for the Certification of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis in 1995 to independently verify the eradication of wild poliovirus. The GCC certified the worldwide eradication of indigenous wild poliovirus type 2 on 20 September 2015, and wild poliovirus type 3 on 17 October 2019. In addition, five of the six World Health Organization Regions certified their status as free of indigenous transmission of all three serotypes of wild poliovirus :