CU infant mortality
3 January 2002

Cuba records lowest infant mortality rate
BBC. 3 January 2002. 

Cuba has recorded its lowest infant mortality rate for four decades, with 6.2 children in every 1,000 dying before the age of one.

According to figures from the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, Cuba - along with Canada - now has the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas.

The United States is second with seven in every 1,000 children.

Guatemala has the highest infant mortality rate with 45 in every 1,000 children.

LOWEST INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN CUBA'S HISTORY REPORTED. 
Radio Havana Cuba

Havana, (RHC)-- The year 2001 closed with the announcement that Cuba had reduced its infant mortality to a new record low: 6.2 for every 1000 live births. With this news, Cuba has officially achieved a lower infant mortality rate than the United States -- which stands at seven. According to reports from the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Cuba tied with Canada and leads the Americas with the lowest death rate among children under the age of one year. The infant mortality rate of a country is often used as an indicator of the nation's health. Cuban officials noted that the island's care for children begins with excellent pre-natal attention. Among the services provided -- free-of-charge: fourteen weeks into one's pregnancy, mothers-to-be are given special attention by their family doctor. If women are unable to get to their neighborhood clinic, the doctors make house calls. During their first year, newborn children receive an average of 25 medical checkups -- in addition to vaccines against 12 childhood diseases, including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, measles, mumps and polio. New mothers are also given one year off from work -- with full pay -- and are guaranteed, by law, the jobs they left before becoming mothers. A government-sponsored campaign to promote breastfeeding has apparently been successful -- with a high percentage of mothers reporting that they exclusively breastfeed their babies for the first four to six months. At the time of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in 1959, the infant mortality rate was nearly 40 for every 1000 live births. Over the past 43 years, health authorities report that the indicator has progressively improved. During the 1970s, infant mortality was in the 20s; during the 1980s, the rate was reduced to the lower teens; and during the decade of the 1990s, infant mortality in Cuba was lowered to less than ten per one thousand births.