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CDC Finds U.S. 30th in Infant Mortality

TUESDAY, Nov. 3 (HealthDay News) -- When comparing rates of infant mortality, the United States lags dismally behind most other developed countries, largely because of a disproportionately high number of babies delivered prematurely, according to a new government report.

"The U.S. in 2005 ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality," said Marian F. MacDorman, a statistician at the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of a data brief the agency released Tuesday. "The main cause of the high infant mortality rate is the very high percentage of preterm births in the U.S."

Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical director at the March of Dimes, said the finding "is an indictment of the way we deliver health care in the United States, and it's a reiteration of prematurity as the No. 1 public health problem in America."

"This gives us direct evidence that the extraordinary prematurity rate in the U.S. directly impacts on infant death," Fleischman said.

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