Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
https://www.cia.gov/library/publicat.../2091rank.html
It's about double the best countries. The percentage seems small but when you think about some 4 million born in the US every year, that translates roughly into 15,000 more deaths compared to the best.
Granted there are a lot of reasons for infant mortality, hence it's use as a general measurement.
-spence
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The CIA infant mortality rate stats are interesting. 12 of the countries with lower IMF rates than U.S. have populations less than one million--some as low as 14 or 15 thousand which, as you say, is our total yearly infant death rate. They may not even have 1000 births per year which is the rate number used for IMR. Other than Japan, the other "better" countries have populations ranging in the low to double digit millions. We compare VERY, VERY favorably with populations over 100 million, with the exception of Japan which is an ethnically and culturally homogenous society lacking our demographic problems and blessed with a healthy life style and diet. The U.S. IMR stats seem to have gone down from the 7 per 1000 to 6.26/1000 and sit just above Cuba which is supposed to be a model of socialist health care.
As you say, there are a lot of reasons for infant mortality. The rates, however, can be skewed by how they are reported by individual countries. Many countries report relatively few infants as having died during the first 24 hours. This number is over one third of all infant deaths in the US, Australia, and Canada, but only about one fourth of totals in Japan and Sweden, it's less than one sixth of total in France, and only 1 twenty fifth of total in Hong Kong! Figures so low for some countries as to be suspect.
In Cuba and many European countries, births of less than 1000 grams are not counted toward mortality stats. In Switzerland, babies born less than 30 cm long are not counted as live births, and babies weighing less than 2.2 pounds and die after birth are counted as still births so do not affect the IMR. In Japan and Hong Kong babies born alive but die within the first 24 hours are reported as miscarriages so do not affect the IMR.
The Canadian Medical Assoc. Journal for Sept. 5, 2000 reports that "international comparisons of infant mortality are compromised by a lack of standardization with regard to birth registration practices. Studies have documented wide variation in the rate at which extemely small babies at the borderline of variability (e.g. 550g) are registered in different countries. As a potential solution the WHO has recommended that international comparisons of infant mortality be restricted to live births in which the newborn weighs 1000g or more. such a restriction would eliminate a substantial proportion of neonatal deaths from the infant mortality counts of most industrialized countries, however. This and other challenges inherent in birth-wieght-specific comparisons mean that international infant mortality rankings will continue to be based on crude rates and still favor industrialized countries which tend NOT TO REGISTER EXTREMELY SMALL LIVE BIRTHS"
Dr. Linda Halderman states that low birth weight infants (less than 1000g) are not counted against the "live birth" statistics for many countries reporting low IMR. When weight at birth is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the US. Survival rates for high risk low weight babies is higher in the US than in Norway and Japan because we do so much more to save them. In Belgium and France any baby born before 26 weeks gestation is not considered alive and doesn't count against the IMR.
Uniform reporting would move the U.S. up from the bottom third to about the middle of the OECD group. Our unique problems of life and health style, lack of homogenous cultural ethnicity, high crime rates, high teen pregnancy rates, racial diversity, massive illegal immigration problems, etc., would probably keep us from being the best, no matter what health care bill is passed. Maybe, if we swore off of red meat, ate tofu and rice, stayed close to home and all thought the same way, etc., we would be #1.