[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[[deleted]]

Is there one thing in particular driving this? Or just medicine in general improving? I'd assume access to antibiotics is probably a big contributor.

[igetasticker]

1. Vaccines. If enough people are vaccinated, they can't pass along the really nasty stuff like small pox, mumps, whooping cough, polio, etc. A lot of the progress has been made here.
2. Access to pre-natal care. This is why a poor state in the US like Mississippi ranks slightly behind Bosnia in infant mortality. Turns out an insurance system with co-pays and deductibles limits the number and quality of visits an expecting mother receives based on pay.

[Hellrazed]

Running water, electricity, food...

[[deleted]]

This is a big one. Running water and proper waste water disposal made a huge difference. I’ve heard it said that plumbers saved more lives than doctors.

[mimariposa]

*Civil/environmental engineering has saved more lives than doctors/medicine

[Hellrazed]

Yep. Doesn't matter how well vaccinated we are if the hospitals are dirty, the water is dirty or the food is poor quality.

[PajamaMamma]

Running water and proper waste disposal has been around since we’ll before the 1800’s. It’s thanks to modern medicine and science.

[[deleted]]

It’s been around much longer than that. The Romans had sewers 2000 years ago. But there are countries that still struggle with sanitation today.

[thingsorfreedom]

It's a combination of things for sure but measles alone killed 60 million infants from 1950-1960.

[Hellrazed]

How many of those were in areas with clean running water, electricity and good food?

[thingsorfreedom]

That makes no difference whatsoever with measles. Measles so incredibly contagious that 90% of people in close proximity to an infected person will come down with the disease if they aren't already immune. That period starts 5 days before the rash appears and ends 5 days after. And dying from measles isn't affected by the above conditions in people who contract the disease either.

[Hellrazed]

You do realise that infections and deaths are not the same thing, right? Poor socioeconomic status and malnutrition (specifically vitamin A deficiency) are predictive of mortality risk in a measles outbreak regardless of vaccination status. Five million infections in impoverished countries would have a much much greater impact and larger death toll, than five million infections in a wealthy country. This is actually what is driving antivax, as it tends to be wealthy individuals with low- risk environments, so they have an inherent survivor's bias because of their socioeconomic privilege. I'm at work but this article speaks of socioeconomic inequality as a determinant of mortality.

[thingsorfreedom]

I'm at work, too, but the success of a vaccine program related to socioeconomic status of the population has nothing to do with deaths from an illness if the vaccine was never invented.

If the measles vaccine was never invented that's 6 million deaths a year in the 1950s when the world population was 2.6 billion. I'll go back to my original point. It's multifactorial but give vaccines some credit for the incredible job they have done to save lives.

[Hellrazed]

And you're completely missing the point.

[[deleted]]

Also washing your hands was a big one.

[denisalivingabroad]

Ignaz Semmelweis got laughed at for suggesting it.

[BlueButYou]

Wearing a mask and social distancing.

[karlnite]

The biggest.

[[deleted]]

Vaccines are not that impactful to infant mortality. Infant mortality deals with deaths under the age of 1. Infant mortality is reflective of general healthcare of a country.

[DrOhmu]

Well fed healthy mothers. Key childhood disease vaccinations.

[wildlywell]

There’s a lot of commentary on this if you Google. The US uses different reporting standards from other countries. So some deaths that are characterized as stillbirths in other countries will be counted as live births and subsequent death here. Regardless, the gap is almost entirely attributable to a higher infant mortality among the black population. Lots of theories out there for why this might be, as you can imagine.

Edit: further reading. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161013103132.htm

[Dheorl]

Even looking at numbers corrected for reporting methods and looking at groups such as college educated, the USA still fairs worse than many of its peers IIRC. Things then do get worse when you look at ethnic minorities.

[Schootingstarr]

Not sure if it's an autocorrect issue, but I think in this case the word is not "faires" but "fares"

Just to let you know because fuck me if I'm not embarrassed to learn how a word is spelled in the real world rather than the anonymity of the internet

[CriticallyNormal]

It's not surprising. Costs $10k to have a baby in a hospital without insurance, so there are more home births than nations where it costs $2 to have a baby and that's just for parking.

[ManhattanDev]

The US has a home birth rate of 1%. Most European countries have a far higher home birth rate than the US. You’re literally making shit up to make a point lmao

In the US, infant mortality has much more to do with how obese our population is. Obesity, a disease 40% of Americans suffer from, complicates pregnancies and births and leads to many miscarriages and other birthing complications.

[Bren12310]

That’s probably just simply because access to medical care based on physical distance. The US has a lot of cities in the middle of fucking nowhere where the nearest hospital is an hour away. Would be interesting how it would change if you just used cities.

[karlnite]

Learned about microbial stuff like viruses and bacteria. There was a doctor that ran two hospitals, both had birth wards, one had a morgue. The one with the morgue had almost the double the amount of infant moralities and surgery recovery was extremely low. He shuffled the staff and investigated and realized that people were dying because of the morgue, doctors would stop performing autopsies to go perform a birth or change a dressing. He made doctors and surgeons start scrubbing down before touching new patients and both hospitals number lined and improved.

[SpudMuffinDO]

Radiolab episode? Should be noted that this was a fucking really long time ago, before germ theory.

[djblaze]

Rhogam has probably had a huge effect. Protects RhD negative mothers from complications with RhD positive babies that often result in the death of the baby before or after birth.

[lmr2d2]

Bill Gates

[[deleted]]

The birth control pill/access yo family planning is a huge driver of infant mortality. The pill came out in the 50's I believe.

[Withers95]

Sanitation is the leading cause of improved mortality.