* - Not on the CIA Factbook list of DC’s
Infant and Maternal Mortality Comparisons
While data is not available for all of the developed western countries, average percentages of births attended by skilled health staff are high, with 99.5% of total births are attended by skilled health staff in “High Income OECD” countries. OECD stands for: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
With consistently high rates of skilled birth attendants present at births in OECD countries, what other factors can explain the marked gap in infant mortality between different Western countries?
Going by the CIA Factbook list of developed countries, the United States has the highest infant mortality rate. Using the IMF’s list of “advanced economies” it is second only to Cyprus. The United States has an infant mortality rate of 6.30 per 1,000 live births, and had the largest percent difference in infant mortality, 12.29% more than the next highest country, Italy.
In the United States, over 27,000 infants were lost in 2008, while in Sweden, with the lowest infant mortality rate, only approximately 250 babies died. If Sweden had the same number of live births as the United States, and maintained the same infant mortality rate, only 11,874 babies would die, less than half of the infant deaths in the United States.
Just as striking are differences in maternal mortality. There are 10 developed Western countries with less than 5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, 13 with 5-12 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, and 4 of those 13 have 10-12 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.
In the United States, tied for the second highest maternal mortality ratio with Portugal, this data means that with over 4.1 million births in 2005, over 450 women died as a result of pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum complications. In contrast, Ireland has only approximately 59,500 births a year, and lost less than 1 woman with a maternal mortality rate of 1 out of every 100,000 live births. If Ireland had the same birth rate as the United States, and maintained the same maternal mortality rate, Ireland would lose only 41 women as a result of childbirth, less than 10% of the maternal deaths in the United States.
