Factors Associated With Child Undernutrition In Pakistan: A Systematic Review.

Evidence suggests that undernutrition among children remain high in Pakistan. The aim of this systematic review of literature was to determine the prevalence of undernutrition and its factors associated with children under five years in Pakistan. A systematic review was carried out by using the most relevant published studies between 2000 to 2019 by different electronic databases searching engines, namely Science direct, PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, Embase and PsycINFO. The research articles consist child undernutrition related data in Pakistan were assessed. Searching key words were "under-nutrition", "malnutrition," "wasting," "stunting," "under 5 years," "Pakistan," "associated factors," "children,". A total of the 608 preliminarily retrieved articles, 14 were met with study included criteria. The most consistence emerging themes on child undernutrition literature review were; low birth spacing, low family income, child age group, gender, small birth size, early marriages, large family size, mother's education and lack of breastfeeding. There is a need for mixed method and qualitative studies to understand an insight into the factors associated with child undernutrition in Pakistan. To achieve a sustainable improvement, there is a need for community-based holistic multi-strategy method that targets the child undernutrition associated factors, therefore, the WHO global nutrition target to 2025 can also be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]