Carnal Reason

The QandO Blog:

This irritates me every time I see it. Breathless accounts of a high infant mortality rate in the US have again hit the front pages of morning newspapers:

An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found.

Only Latvia, with six deaths per 1,000 live births, has a higher death rate for newborns than the United States, which is tied near the bottom of industrialized nations with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with five deaths per 1,000 births.

“The United States has more neonatologists and neonatal intensive care beds per person than Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, but its newborn rate is higher than any of those countries,” said the annual State of the World’s Mothers report.

Well yes, all “statistically” true. But not because the US has an inferior health care system like so many would like to claim (and, of course, then claim that a universal health care system would “save the babies”), but instead because while there is a standard for reporting infant mortality statistics throughout the world, it appears only the US follows it.

Good article; read the whole thing.

Posted on May 10th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: science