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Thursday, February 12, 2004Health experts said they were shocked by the rise in the number and rate of infants dying. The United States already trails most industrial countries in infant mortality. ``We're perturbed,'' said Dr. Nancy Green, medical director of the March of Dimes, a New York-based children's health advocacy group. ``It reflects a movement in the wrong direction in child health in this country. Infant mortality is a major indicator in child health.'' How shocking is the increase? According to preliminary data released Wednesday by Washington-based statisticians for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation's infant mortality rate in 2002 was 7.0 per 1,000 births. That's up from 6.8 in 2001. Um, excuse me, but isn't 7/1,000 basically the same as 6.8/1,000? UPDATE: A statistician says: Speaking as a statistician? No, not at all. There are about 4,000,000 births in the US every year. That means approximately 2,000 more infants died in 2002 than in 2001. The 7/1,000 number comes from looking at just about every infant death, so the sample size is the full 4,000,000. It's a statistically significant figure to whatever level of significance you want. Saying that these two numbers are "basically the same" is the sort of statement I would expect from a student in my introductory statistics class, and only then at the beginning of the semester. The numbers sound similar, but they are different enough to indicate a real change in US infant mortality rates. Or consider it this way. Last year, 0.7% of infants died. The year before that, only 0.68% died. In terms of real significance, it's the same. MORE: From a reader: We can speculate as to why the US's is as high as it is--unequal access to health care, lack of personal responsibility, poor prenatal care, substantial economic disparity, substance abuse, an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous society, political inertia and/or indifference, on and on--the bottom line is that is disappointing and ,for me embarrassing given our wealth, spending on health care, and general compassion as a country--on the flip side we are well below the third world nations and not in the 100 countries with the highest infant mortality Rank Country Rate (1998) or see CDC link below which confirms rates with more recent data 1 Hong Kong 3.2 2 Sweden 3.5 3 Japan 3.6 4 Norway 4.0 5 Finland 4.1 6 Singapore 4.2 7 France 4.6 7 Germany 4.6 9 Denmark 4.7 10 Switzerland 4.8 11 Austria 4.9 12 Australia 5.0 13 Netherlands 5.2 13 Czech Republic 5.2 15 Canada 5.3 15 Italy 5.3 17 Scotland 5.5 17 New Zealand 5.5 19 Belgium 5.6 19 Northern Ireland 5.6 21 England and Wales 5.7 21 Greece 5.7 21 Israel 5.7 21 Spain 5.7 25 Portugal 5.9 26 Ireland 6.2 27 Cuba 7.1 28 UNITED STATES These are from 1998, so presumably we've made an improvement since then. But, I would point out, as the original article I linked to also did, that our higher infant mortality rate is thought to be due not to medical neglect of healthy infants, but to a greater number of premature infants and high-risk pregnancies. These high risk pregnancies are not necessarily caused by medical neglect of pregnant mothers, but by too much healthcare - such as higher rates of hightech infertility procedures. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, we can't assume any longer that infant mortality reflects the status of a nation's healthcare. At least not in developed nations that don't ration healthcare. posted by Sydney on 2/12/2004 08:41:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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