Is it true that the United States has the second worst newborn death rate in the world?
It’s not true, and this is one of the things that has been used to confuse people and things have been said in a very misleading way. First of all, typically what people refer to when they talk about the US’s poor position is “infant mortality rate”. Now, infant mortality rate refers to deaths that are birth to one year. That’s a measure of pediatric care. It’s not a measure of obstetric care. According to the World Health Organization, the best measure of obstetric care is perinatal mortality, which is stillbirth plus deaths during labor, and up to 28 days of life. In fact, the Unites States has one of the best perinatal mortality rates in the world. The World Health Organization in their 2006 report shows that it has a lower perinatal mortality rate than Denmark, the United Kingdom, and even The Netherlands, which is the place where they have more home births than anywhere. So, it’s an incredibly misleading statement, and when it comes to obstetric care, the Unites States does very v
