Slate Magazine, in its support of Moore's claim that health care in the US ranks 37th in quality, points out the high infant mortality rate in US hospitals. The thing is, this high mortality rate is actually due to our successes.
Infant deaths in poor nations are roughly six times more common than in developed areas and result mainly from easily treated infections like diarrhea in the first few months. By contrast, the majority of deaths in developed countries result from extreme prematurity or birth defects that kill a newborn in the first few days or weeks of life. According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half. Thus—at the risk of oversimplifying—infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.
Hear that? The problem isn’t that the babies which are being born are dying at a higher rate, it’s that we give birth to more premature babies, and therein lies the problem.
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