Muhammad Asim, Babak Mahmood, Malik Muhammad Sohail.
INFANT HEALTH CARE; Practices in Pakistan: a systematic review.
Professional Med J Jan ;22(8):978-88.

In Pakistan 1 in every 14 infants die before reaching one year of age. Infant mortality highly depends upon the health care practices by the caretakers. Objective: To investigate the infant risky health care practices and their impact on infants’ health in Pakistan. Study Design: Descriptive systematic literature review. Setting and Period: All the research articles that was published in between 2000 to 2015. Methods: Focusing on newborn health care practices with special reference to mothers utilization of antennal and postnatal care, pre-lacteal feedings, colostrum, breastfeeding, cord care practices and complementary feeding. A systematic search of national and international literature especially from developing countries was undertaken from peer-reviewed indexed journals and news articles from 2000-2015 to access the infant health care practices. Results: sixty five articles were included in this review article. All the studies focused on the determinants of infant health care practices. It was found that mother’s prenatal and postnatal care utilization service was poor. It was further investigated that colstrum is not preferred first feed of the mothers and family members to their infants. Mostly mothers gave the pre-lacteal feeding to their children irrespective to their education and social status and it cause the delayed in initiating the breastfeeding to the neonates. Only a small proportion of the mothers initiate the breastfeeding with in the first hour of birth and mothers are unaware about the importance of breastfeeding. Furthermore, the mothers are also unaware about cord care and use conventional methods for cord care. Conclusion: It was investigated that infant health care practices is highly influenced by the culture and religious belifs of the caretakers. Due to the lack of proper health care of infants, Pakistan is facing high infant mortality rate and substandard infant health indicators. It is suggested that government and policy makers should arrange the trainings/ workshops for the mothers and adolescents for the purpose to discourage the risky health care practices.

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