[lbo-talk] Cuba and Health Statistics

ira glazer ira at yanua.com
Mon Jan 3 15:16:25 PST 2005


The latest WHO world health report (2004) is available at: (this is the latest report available -- most of these statistics are from 2002, with some from 2001 or even 2000)

http://www.who.int/whr/2004/en/

But just to give you an idea, for the Americas, the only countries classified as having 'very low child and very low adult mortality' are Canada, the United States, and .... Cuba. These are the only countries in the Americas classified as 'developed' with regard to the irrelevant and frivolous parameters of child and adult mortality. Kind of gives a different twist to the orthodox economic meaning of 'development'.

With regard to infant mortality and under-five mortality rates, the infant mortality rate in Cuba is 7 per 1000 live births, while the under-five rate is 9 per 1000 live births -- the exact same as for that other impoverished, economically backward country, the United States of America.

Since obviously the U.S.'s statistics are skewed by its barbaric inequalities in social welfare, it's instructive to compare Cuba's rates with those for other developed countries ('developed' in the official sense of the word). New Zealand's rates are 6 per 1000 live births for infant mortality, and 8 per 1000 live births for under-five mortality, while the rates for Ireland, the country that the Economist magazine just annointed as having the highest quality of life in the world -- or some such thing -- are 6 per 1000 live births for infant mortality and 7 per 1000 live births for under-five mortality.

With regard to life expectancy, a Cuban's life expectancy at birth in 2002 (regardless of sex) was 77.1 years -- way less than that for the extremely poor, third world nation of Belgium -- 78.4 years -- and not even comparable to that for a citizen of the most destitute superpower in the history of the world, the United States of America -- 77.3 years.



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