Effect of overseas parental employment migration on healthcare seeking for common childhood illnesses and nutritional status among left-behind young children: a systematic review

We aimed to examine the available evidence on the impact of overseas parental migration on healthcare seeking for common childhood illnesses and the nutritional status of children left-behind under five years of age. A systematic review of English language articles was conducted on PubMed, MEDLINE and EMBASE, supplemented by a manual search of grey literature and reference lists. There were no studies examining the association between overseas parental migration and healthcare seeking for common childhood illnesses. We found three cross-sectional surveys examining the association with an indicator of nutritional status. We observed mixed findings from the available studies. The results indicated that children left-behind may have positive, negative or null effects on their nutritional status. There was insufficient information available to draw conclusions on the magnitude and direction of the association between overseas parental migration and its effect on either healthcare seeking for common childhood illnesses or the nutritional status of left-behind children. The association, if any, may be context or country dependent. Prospective studies are needed to address this important knowledge gap.