As a war reporter, I have spent countless hours in and out of maternity hospitals worldwide. And I can say wholeheartedly that not even somewhere as impoverished and poorly governed as Afghanistan – despite struggling with its own jarring maternal mortality rate – would deny a pregnant woman medical treatment or force her to hand over the family’s life savings to obtain adequate care. The process of giving birth is revered and cherished – a concept that, from my own lens of going through this experience, hardly seems significant in the cash-grabbing, corporate American healthcare system.
Infant mortality in the US measures the number of live births that don’t survive their first year of life per 1000. The problem is different countries define live births differently. The US considers all births where the infant shows any sign of life a live birth. Some countries don’t even count pre mature babies as live births. 2/3 of infant deaths in developed countries come in the first four weeks. European countries have stricter definitions of live birth, meaning they are not counting the deaths of the sickest infants in their statistics. When you factor this in, the US has the one of if not the lowest child mortality in the world. (It’s a statistical trick perfected by the Soviets to make their mortality rate competitive with the west.) A rule of thumb is divide the given US mortality rate by two and it’s closer to the comparable stat.
Just like any comparison that says UK healthcare is better than US healthcare will use things like customer feelings instead of direct comparison of say: a 99% survival rate of breast cancer after five years in the US to a 85% chance of surviving five years in the UK.
The US isn’t the most dangerous place to give birth, it’s a statistically more accurate place to give birth.
(Or put simply: this stat is essentially useless because every country has a different definition of one of the values used. It can only be used to compare to our own previous years.)
Infant mortality in the US measures the number of live births that don’t survive their first year of life per 1000. The problem is different countries define live births differently. The US considers all births where the infant shows any sign of life a live birth. Some countries don’t even count pre mature babies as live births. 2/3 of infant deaths in developed countries come in the first four weeks. European countries have stricter definitions of live birth, meaning they are not counting the deaths of the sickest infants in their statistics. When you factor this in, the US has the one of if not the lowest child mortality in the world. (It’s a statistical trick perfected by the Soviets to make their mortality rate competitive with the west.) A rule of thumb is divide the given US mortality rate by two and it’s closer to the comparable stat.
Just like any comparison that says UK healthcare is better than US healthcare will use things like customer feelings instead of direct comparison of say: a 99% survival rate of breast cancer after five years in the US to a 85% chance of surviving five years in the UK.
The US isn’t the most dangerous place to give birth, it’s a statistically more accurate place to give birth.
(Or put simply: this stat is essentially useless because every country has a different definition of one of the values used. It can only be used to compare to our own previous years.)