#21? Are You Kidding Me?

MORE STATS!

Interesting isn't it? Here in the US, the most industrialized, progressive, and technologically advanced country, where we have freedoms and accessibility to so much more than other countries in terms of healthcare and financial gains, we still have horrible infant mortality rates, with one of the highest preemie rates in the world of developed countries. For every 1000 births last year in the US, 6.4 resulted in newborn death. WHY?! With all of our know-how, we should not be ranking #21 in the world! (On another ranking, the US is #43).

The World Health Organization (WHO) has seen the potential danger in the overuse of technology, medicine, and intervention in childbirth for years; and it has tried urging the US to reevaluate our childbirth practices for decades. Their urging strikes a clear tone: we need a more natural and wholistic approach to childbirth in order to better our numbers and outcomes. This approach is found in the midwifery model of care. Every developed country that beats us at stats like these have two things in common: less medicinalization and more midwifery.

"The neonatal mortality rate for the U.S. in 1989 was slightly more than 10 per 1,000 live births. We have the most highly sophisticated and expensive system of maternity care in the world, yet in the same year twenty other countries — countries with less technology than we have in our hospitals and laboratories — had more babies survive their first months of life than our babies in the United States.

With fewer high-tech hospitals and obstetricians available, many of those countries — like Holland, Sweden and Denmark — use midwives as the primary care-givers for healthy women during their pregnancies and births." - gentlebirth

Infant Mortality Rates 2006 infant deaths per 1000 of population:
1. Sweden 2.8
2. Japan 3.2
3. Finland 3.5
4. Norway 3.7
5. Czech Republic 3.9
6. Germany 4.1
7. France 4.2
8. Switzerland 4.3
9. Spain 4.4
10. Denmark 4.5
11. Australia 4.6
12. Austria 4.6
13. Canada 4.7
14. Portugal 5.0
15. United Kingdom 5.1
16. Ireland 5.3
17. Greece 5.4
18. Italy 5.8
19. New Zealand 5.8
20. Korea, South 6.2
21. United States 6.4
22. Israel 6.9
23. Cyprus 7.0
24. Poland 7.2
25. Slovakia 7.3
26.Hungary 8.4
27. Chile 8.6
28. Costa Rica 9.7
29. Sri Lanka 14.0
30. Russia 15.1
31. Panama 16.4
32. Mexico 20.3
33. Albania 20.8
34. Venezuela 21.5
35. Ecuador 22.9
36. China 23.1
37. Brazil 28.6
38. Syria 28.6
39. Guatemala 30.9
40. Peru 30.9
41. Egypt 31.3
42. Iran 40.3
43. Zimbabwe 51.7
44. India 54.6
45. Kenya 59.3
46. South Africa 60.7
47. Bangladesh 60.8
48. Pakistan 70.5
49. Nigeria 97.1
50. Mozambique 129.2
51. Angola 185.4

I have been accused of everything from being a hippy on a mission to being an OB-hater, to being a conspiracy theorist. But the numbers and practices associated with those numbers simply do not lie. What is wrong with our country that we (Obstetricians and those on medical boards) are more anxious about their pocket books than children's lives? Why is that we (the consumers, expectant parents, and patients) are more inclined to sue for 'negligence', perpetuating the high cost of health care and 'precautionary obstetrics', rather than take responsibility for our own consumerism and health care? Someone PLEASE tell me why!!!