opendoc-pakistan/pakistan_provincial_health_indicators

Pakistan Provincial Child Health Indicators (PDHS 2017-18)

Province-level child nutrition (stunting, wasting, underweight) and childhood immunization coverage (BCG, measles, all-basic, none) for Pakistan's four main provinces, from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18. Fills the sub-national gap left by national-aggregate indicator series.

Source: OpenDoc Pakistan

Pakistan Provincial Child Health Indicators (PDHS 2017-18)

Summary

Province-level child health indicators for Pakistan's four main provinces (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan), covering child nutrition (stunting, wasting, underweight) and childhood immunization coverage (BCG, measles, all-basic vaccinations, no vaccinations). Sourced from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18. This dataset fills the sub-national gap left by national-aggregate series such as pakistan_health_indicators and pakistan_disease_surveillance, exposing the large inter-provincial disparities those national figures hide.

Dataset Details

• —Dataset ID: pakistan-provincial-health-indicators
• —Version: 1.0.0
• —Category: Health
• —Tags: nutrition, stunting, wasting, immunization, vaccination, provincial, pdhs, children, pakistan
• —Language: English
• —Geography: Pakistan (Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan)
• —Time Period: 2017-2018 (PDHS reference)
• —File Formats: CSV
• —Records: 28 observations (4 provinces x 7 indicators)
• —Update Frequency: Per DHS round (~5 years)
• —Maintainer: OpenDoc Data Stewardship Team

Source and Provenance

• —Source Name: Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2017-18, Key Indicators Report
• —Source URL: https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/FR354/FR354.pdf
• —Source Type: National household survey (NIPS / National Institute of Population Studies with ICF, The DHS Program)
• —Collection Method: Values extracted from the PDHS Key Indicators PDF via automated PDF parsing (firecrawl parse), then transcribed from Table 11 (vaccinations, children 12-23 months) and Table 13 (nutritional status of children under 5). Stunting/wasting/underweight are the percentage of children below -2 SD (height-for-age, weight-for-height, weight-for-age respectively).
• —Collection Date: July 2026
• —Processing Pipeline: Parsed PDF -> located province rows in Tables 11 & 13 -> mapped labelled columns -> long-format CSV (province, indicator_code, indicator_name, year, value, unit).
• —Raw Data Availability: Public PDHS report; full microdata available via the DHS Program (registration required).

License

• —Original License: The DHS Program permits use of published report data with attribution.
• —Repository License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• —Attribution Required: Yes
• —Commercial Use: Allowed
• —Restrictions: Must credit NIPS, ICF / The DHS Program, and OpenDoc Pakistan.

Intended Use

Appropriate for:

• —Comparing child nutrition and immunization outcomes across provinces.
• —Highlighting provincial disparities for policy, advocacy, and dashboards.
• —Combining with national series for multi-scale analysis.

Out-of-Scope Use

• —District-level analysis (data is province-level).
• —Trend analysis across survey rounds (this release contains only PDHS 2017-18).
• —Clinical or individual-level decisions.

Data Structure

Single CSV at data/processed/provincial_health_indicators.csv in long format. One row per province per indicator.

Indicators: stunting, wasting, underweight (nutrition); bcg, measles, basic_vaccination, no_vaccination (immunization).

Data Dictionary

See data_dictionary.csv.

Quality Report

• —Quality Score: 100 / 100
• —Rating: Excellent
• —Records: 28 (4 provinces x 7 indicators)
• —Duplicate Rows: 0% (primary key: province + indicator_code)
• —Validation Status: Passed Frictionless tabular-data-resource schema.
• —Known Issues: Only the four main provinces are included; ICT Islamabad, FATA, AJK, and Gilgit-Baltistan rows were excluded because the parsed PDF rows for those regions showed column-alignment artefacts and were not reliably verifiable.

Privacy and Sensitivity Review

• —Privacy Level: P0 (aggregate survey estimates; no personal data)
• —Personal Data Present: No
• —Sensitive Data Present: No
• —Redactions Applied: None

Bias, Gaps, and Limitations

• —Survey estimates carry sampling error; small-sample regions were excluded for reliability.
• —Province aggregates still mask district and urban/rural disparities.
• —Values reflect 2017-18; coverage and nutrition status may have shifted since.

Example Usage

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("data/processed/provincial_health_indicators.csv")

# Stunting by province
print(df[df["indicator_code"] == "stunting"][["province", "value"]])

Citation

National Institute of Population Studies (NIPS) and ICF, "Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey 2017-18", curated as "Pakistan Provincial Child Health Indicators" by OpenDoc Pakistan (OpenDoc), v1.0.0, 2026.