Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The Larger Shame

Nicholas Kristof, in a typical NY Times op-ed, mentions some stats which seem worth sharing. Though I have heard all these numbers talked about in isolation, when I see them all together it seems more than a little disturbing.

"If it's shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it's even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America's capital is twice as high as in China's capital. That's right - the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing."

"Indeed, according to the United Nations Development Program, an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than a baby born in urban parts of the state of Kerala in India."

"Nationally, 29 percent of children had no health insurance at some point in the last 12 months, and many get neither checkups nor vaccinations. On immunizations, the U.S. ranks 84th for measles and 89th for polio."

No comments: