Impact of a Primary Health Care Program on Health Status of Women and Children In An Urban Settlement of Karachi, Pakistan

Background and Objective: Department of Community Health Sciences, AKU is running a Campus-Community Partnership model of primary health care “Urban Health Program (UHP)” in squatter settlements of Karachi. UHP offers... [ view full abstract ]

Background and Objective:
Department of Community Health Sciences, AKU is running a Campus-Community Partnership model of primary health care “Urban Health Program (UHP)” in squatter settlements of Karachi. UHP offers preventive, promotive, basic curative and rehabilitative services focused on families especially mother and children. In order to generate population-based data for timely decision making a population based surveillance system was installed in 2015 at Sultanabad. This data was compared with baseline data collected in 1996 to see the trends in indicators.
Methods:
Line listing of households was done in all sectors of Sultanabad within 400 meter radius from UHP health centre. Households (HH) were eligible to be enrolled if there was a married woman of 15-49 years of age. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire which was translated into “Urdu”. Analysis was done using SPSS version 19.
Results:
Proportion of women with no schooling dropped from 78% in 1996 to 38.6% in 2015. Proportion of housewives declined to 75% in 2015 from 92% in 1996. Proportion of women seeking antenatal care increased from 19% in 1996 to 87% in 2015 similarly home deliveries declined to 25% from 75% between 1996 and 2015. Contraceptive prevalence improved to just 32% from 14.4%. Proportion of children exclusively breast fed increased from 36% to 63%. Stunting among children under 5 reduced to 40% in 2015 from 70% in 1996.
Conclusion:
Due to longstanding presence of Aga Khan University in this squatter settlement, some of the maternal and child health indicators have improved, failure to use contraception and stagnant rates of malnutrition in children are glaring examples of where services have faltered. This ongoing surveillance will help the UHP, NGOs working in Sultanabad, government programs and community organizations to focus on these priority issues.