Cuba: Fewer Infant Deaths than US
HAVANA (AFP) - In 2006, Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate in its history and of all Latin America, putting it in second place behind Canada for the Americas as a whole, according to a health ministry report.
Cuba's infant mortality rate was 5.3 deaths per 1,000 births in 2006, compared to 5.8 per 1,000 in 2005, making it "the leader in Latin America" in the category, said the report quoted in the official newspaper Granma.
"Within the Americas, only Canada had a lower rate than Cuba," said the health ministry, stressing that Cuba "is among the world's 30 nations with the lowest death rate for children between birth and one year of age."
Since 1995, Cuba's infant mortality rate dropped by 43.6 percent, Granma said. In 1960, at the start of Cuban leader Fidel Castro's Communist Revolution, the infant mortality rate stood at 37.3 per 1,000.
The health ministry attributed the current low rate to three new types of medical exams that detect health-threatening genetical abnormalities and advances in pedriatic medicine and prenatal care.
Extrapolating this rate of infant deaths across Latin America would result in the saving of 700,000 lives a year.
posted by leftside at
10:29 AM
6 Comments:
58.6 out of 100 cuban women abort their pregnancies, hence lower infant mortality rates.
Would you like to explain how the abortion rate in Cuba has anything to do with infant mortality... despite what the nutters at Babalu say?
Is JSB's statistic correct - 58.6 out of 100 cuban women abort their pregnancies?
No, the number is outdated- thanks for asking. There were a total of 209,900 qbortions in 1996, leading to that 58.6 ratio. In 2004, after an increased push to lower abortions, the number had dropped to 67,277. Therefore the rate has basically dropped by two-thirds to be apparently lower than the United States' (25.9).
1996 - http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/25s3099.html
2004 - http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33458
Because women with the slightest aberrations with regards to their health of their infant is encouraged to abort their baby in advance of natural birth, hence the number of infant mortality decreases. You can argue with the morality of this from multiple angles but it is a fact that this results in the lower statistics.
Oh yeah, do you know that for a fact? Is that Cuba state policy to encourage abortions just to maximize the statistics? Get real. Just because abortions are seen for what they are - a safe procedure - does not mean they are encouraged. Look at the work the State has done to bring down the abortion rate (again to levels below the US). So your point is both wrong and irrelevant.
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