Health Care? Ask Cuba (US high infant mortality rates)

[Liberty Belle]

Tell the pro-life folks who want to save babies they should quit obsessing over abortion and start by fixing America's appallingly high infant mortality rate:


OP-ED COLUMNIST
Health Care? Ask Cuba
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: January 12, 2005


Here's a wrenching fact: If the U.S. had an infant mortality rate as good as Cuba's, we would save an additional 2,212 American babies a year.

Yes, Cuba's. Babies are less likely to survive in America, with a health care system that we think is the best in the world, than in impoverished and autocratic Cuba. According to the latest C.I.A. World Factbook, Cuba is one of 41 countries that have better infant mortality rates than the U.S.

Even more troubling, the rate in the U.S. has worsened recently.
In every year since 1958, America's infant mortality rate improved, or at least held steady. But in 2002, it got worse: 7 babies died for each thousand live births, while that rate was 6.8 deaths the year before...

<snip>

If we had a rate as good as Singapore's, we would save 18,900 babies each year. Or to put it another way, our policy failures in Iraq may be killing Americans at a rate of about 800 a year, but our health care failures at home are resulting in incomparably more deaths - of infants. And their mothers, because women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/opinion/12kris.html?oref=login&oref=login

[Warpy]

1. Do you think cheap labor Repuglicans care?

With continued offshoring, they're declaring that they don't need the US citizens any more as workers and with their rigged machines, they really don't need us as voters. We've been declared superfluous, and if we are unemployed or retired and unable to consume, we should have the decency to die.

The last thing they want are more of us born safely with mothers who have a chance of surviving the process. The more women die giving birth to dead babies, the better they like it.

Too harsh? Well, are they working on the healthcare situation? Are they trying to figure out how to insure the uninsured? Or are they still trying to maximize industry profits on the backs of the sick?

[eg101]

2. we aint half the badass nation we think we are....

....and I can hardly until America gets its comeuppance....

[mother earth]

3. Great point, and thanks for the info.

Sad statistics. You're right we need to wake up to this problem in the greatest country, why aren't we the leaders? Guess we are too busy spending our money on needless wars.

[oscar111]

6. We're 37 in system quality, 72 in population health

see

WORLD HEALTH REPORT 2OOO, from the WHO of the UN.

"system " meant healthcare
delivery system quality

most years we hover around this level: 2O or so nations outlive us.

Hellhole France has the best health system. Hellhole Norway has the best standard of living for the last several years.. according to another UN agency that rates these things.

{hellhole is a term the RW loves to apply to Norway and Sweden} LOL

Our 'system' just closed a hospital near me.. a chain bought it and closed it, to force us to go a distance to another hospital they own. Profit wins over getting to an ER fast.

[Moderator]

4. moving to Editorials

[Mika]

5. More Cuba stats that put the US and its citizens to shame

This is from 1999, and things have improved even more.


Learn from Cuba
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/learn.htm

“It is in some sense almost an anti-model,” according to Eric Swanson, the programme manager for the Bank’s Development Data Group, which compiled the WDI, a tome of almost 400 pages covering scores of economic, social, and environmental indicators.

Indeed, Cuba is living proof in many ways that the Bank’s dictum that economic growth is a pre-condition for improving the lives of the poor is over-stated, if not, downright wrong.

-

It has reduced its infant mortality rate from 11 per 1,000 births in 1990 to seven in 1999, which places it firmly in the ranks of the western industrialised nations. It now stands at six, according to Jo Ritzen, the Bank’s Vice President for Development Policy, who visited Cuba privately several months ago to see for himself.

By comparison, the infant mortality rate for Argentina stood at 18 in 1999;

Chile’s was down to ten; and Costa Rica, at 12. For the entire Latin American and Caribbean region as a whole, the average was 30 in 1999.

Similarly, the mortality rate for children under the age of five in Cuba has fallen from 13 to eight per thousand over the decade. That figure is 50% lower than the rate in Chile, the Latin American country closest to Cuba’s achievement. For the region as a whole, the average was 38 in 1999.

“Six for every 1,000 in infant mortality - the same level as Spain - is just unbelievable,” according to Ritzen, a former education minister in the Netherlands. “You observe it, and so you see that Cuba has done exceedingly well in the human development area.”

Indeed, in Ritzen’s own field, the figures tell much the same story. Net primary enrolment for both girls and boys reached 100% in 1997, up from 92% in 1990. That was as high as most developed nations - higher even than the US rate and well above 80-90% rates achieved by the most advanced Latin American countries.

“Even in education performance, Cuba’s is very much in tune with the developed world, and much higher than schools in, say, Argentina, Brazil, or Chile.”

It is no wonder, in some ways. Public spending on education in Cuba amounts to about 6.7% of gross national income, twice the proportion in other Latin American and Caribbean countries and even Singapore.

There were 12 primary school pupils for every Cuban teacher in 1997, a ratio that ranked with Sweden, rather than any other developing country. The Latin American and East Asian average was twice as high at 25 to one.

The average youth (age 15-24) illiteracy rate in Latin America and the Caribbean stands at 7%. In Cuba, the rate is zero. In Latin America, where the average is 7%, only Uruguay approaches that achievement, with one percent youth illiteracy.

“Cuba managed to reduce illiteracy from 40% to zero within ten years,” said Ritzen. “If Cuba shows that it is possible, it shifts the burden of proof to those who say it’s not possible.”

Similarly, Cuba devoted 9.1% of its gross domestic product (GDP) during the 1990s to health care, roughly equivalent to Canada’s rate. Its ratio of 5.3 doctors per 1,000 people was the highest in the world.

The question that these statistics pose, of course, is whether the Cuban experience can be replicated. The answer given here is probably not.

“What does it, is the incredible dedication,” according to Wayne Smith, who was head of the US Interests Section in Havana in the late 1970s and early 1980s and has travelled to the island many times since.

Viva Cuba