Health Indicator Rates: Infant Mortality (Essay Sample)

Health Indicator Rates: Infant Mortality
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Infant mortality rates vary across countries and regions. A comparison between the United States and Argentina reveals a slight difference in the number of infants who die annually, according to data from the World Bank. As at 2015, Argentina’s infant mortality rate stood at 11 per 1,000 live births while the United States recorded 6 deaths per 1,000 live births (World Bank Group, 2016).
Infant mortality indicates the rate at which infants die for every 1,000 live births. The rate is scaled to the size of the population, such that in Argentina's population, 11 out of every 1,000 infants (0.011% of all infants) die before they are one year old. In both countries, the data indicates a steady decline in infant death rates over a number of years, although the global average stands much higher, at 31.70 infant deaths per 1,000 live births (World Bank Group, 2016). The estimates are developed by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, comprising of UNICEF, the World Health Organization, World Bank, among others.
The fact that the United States has a relatively lower infant mortality rate than Argentina could be explained by the fact that numerous health inequalities still exist in Argentina, with the risk of death in the first year of life being higher (Finkelstein, Duhau, Speranza, Marconi, & Escobar, 2016). Perinatal conditions and congenital malformations are the main causes of infant mortality (Finkelstein et al., 2016).
Argentina and the United States are both categorized as high-income countries, and the determinants of health and the factors affecting infant health are likely to be related. For this reason, both have lower infant mortality rates than the world average of 31.7 (World Bank Group, 2016). In Argentina, at least 99.5% of all births occur in health facilities, thus reducing the risk of infant and maternal death or birth complications (Finkelstein et al., 2016).
While the United States is a developed country, Argentina is still developing. The latter still experiences basic health challenges such as lack of access to clean water, healthy food, and sufficient medical care. Such determinants affect maternal health and by extension, infant health thus mortality rate (Gragnolati, Rofman, Apella, & Troiano, 2015).
The difference in infant mortality rate (11% for Argentina, and 6% for the U.S) can be accounted for by the difference in quality of, and access to he...