Status of Morbidity in SAARC Countries: Analysis with Panel Data

Background: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries do not show a comparatively healthy picture so far as the status of morbidity is concerned. The largest number of populations have micronutrient deficiencies as well as diabetes, and about 40% of the world’s tuberculosis is observed in this part. Data: This chapter uses the data on various morbidity indicators and related variables of eight SAARC countries availed from the World Bank databases for the period 2000–2020. Objectives: This chapter tries to examine the status of morbidity of the eight SAARC countries along with its relationship with the likely related variables. Methods: Besides computing the descriptive measures of the respective mean values and bivariate correlations of the variables, panel data analysis was carried out using both the fixed effect and random effect models. Results: Most of the explanatory variables, namely, fertility rate, newborn tetanus rate, percentage of open defecation, basic sanitation, no. of physicians, and immunization DPT rates are seen to significantly affect the prevalence of undernutrition and malaria of people, stunting of children, and the prevalence of anemia among pregnant women and among women as a whole. However, anemia among children is not significantly affected by any of these variables. For most of the explanatory factors, there are negative relations with the status of morbidity, whenever the coefficients are significant. However, fertility rate is seen to be positively associated with undernutrition and anemia among pregnant women whereas it is negatively related to anemia in women. Conclusion: The results uphold the practice of immunization of infants and awareness of basic sanitization for all.