Infant mortality rising

[Believeitornot]

I saw that there’s an increase in infant mortality rates. What a worry, how can this be? Is it the nhs bring run into the ground?

Story here www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/15/concern-at-rising-infant-mortality-rate-in-england-and-wales

I also saw the same story posted in the daily mail which blamed immigration in the headline I refuse to link but the bias is appalling.

It has risen once, mainly driven by neonatal mortality. There are a few theories, one is around sicker babies who would have died in the womb being born alive. The other is pregnancies to women with more complications.

I'm sure there are others. Just what in aware of

It's because the care during pregnancies is so cr@p in this country. I get that they save money by midwife lead consultations, but my pregnancy was low risk on paper and only because I thought hard for an additional scan at 30 weeks they accidentally found out that baby was smaller (normally would not even had a scan after 20 weeks) and started doing some sort of monitoring except monthly chats with the midwife.
The system is stretched, but it was faulty to begin with.

I heard of a baby dying of measles recently. I had never known of that in this country all of my life before. I know (from own experience at my daughter's school) that a lot of immigrants refuse to have their babies immunised. My health visitor advised me not to take my baby to the baths because ot it. This will be one factor as well as unhealthy mothers, babies born earlier as someone said and the overburdened NHS. Shocking for the 21st century though.

a lot of immigrants ????? what?

The remark about immigrants isn’t just racist ranting - it has a small element of truth in it. Pakistani immigrants have a high incidence of marriage to first cousins, which means their babies are at increased risk of genetic congenital defects. This across a whole population will result in some extra neonatal deaths.
Secondly, so many women are now grossly obese that their pregnancies are high risk, and they have an increased incidence of stillbirth and miscarriage.
I am sure there will be other factors, such as anti vaxxers who don’t protect their infants against preventable diseases. Measles deaths will inevitably start to rise.

The only way your could be sure whether the mail story has an element of truth is by seeing the breakdown of neonatal deaths by country of origin or by ethnicity. More likely though being the mail(I've not read the story) they mean lots of immigrants result in there not being enough midwife capacity to cover all the cases.

This is the report the news articles are based on.

Interestingly, though Asian, African and Carribean babies suffer the highest rates of infant mortality, those listed as "white other" have the lowest rate and this I assume would include those of East Europeon origin which would seem to somewhat undermine the Mail story

immigrants at somebodys daughters school refusing to have vaccinations and cultures which permit first cousin marriages are not the same thing at all.

very recent bmj article on this

Is Pakistani immigration significantly up currently? I'm not really certain that it is. And I don't believe that vaccine uptake is any lower than say 10 years ago.

Far more likely to be linked to NHS issues, population increase or poverty, all of which ARE on the rise.

Interestingly our stillbirth rate is down which is excellent because we had one of the highest rates in the Western world but that might contribute too as someone else said due to babies with issues being born whereas they may have previously died in utero.

Is there a demographic particularly affected by this rise?
Yes – poor families. Meanwhile, infant mortality has not risen among the richest socio-economic groups. Instead, the rate is continuing to fall.

The pattern of infant mortality is changing, says Dr Cheung. “If you break it down and look at the professional groups what you see is that in 2008 or so, babies born to lower social class parents were about 60 per cent more likely to die than those in the professional groups.”

This gap has also worsened, and this is what we need to pay attention to.

“Now, they are more than twice as likely to die. The gap is big and the gap has gotten bigger during that time. If you look deeper than just the headlines, this is the bit that is really worrying about it.”

From the iNews article.

For those mentioning vaccines, the USA has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western World, but also has the biggest vaccine schedule.

so its not because immigrants at my daughters school dont have vaccinations? the stupidity.

For those mentioning vaccines, the USA has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western World, but also has the biggest vaccine schedule.

Yes but they also don’t have the NHS. That’s comparing apples and oranges.

We need to have an honest discussion about what we want from the NHS, and what we are all willing to do to secure it. At the moment we have a choice between a Conservative Party who will fail to fund it properly and a Labour Party who will borrow money we can't afford. Neither situation is tenable.

We could also tax the rich 100% and it would still not meet the increasing running costs, and healthcare tourism is not the drain some would say it is, and certainly not when set against foreign workers in the NHS. This arguments are just playing in the margins and won't solve the problem. No party ever gets a whiff of power without our say so, and we will in general be resistant to raising of taxes. Which is what ultimately needs to happen, if we want an NHS that is free at the point of use.

The only other thing I can see working is simultaneously raising charitable donations to meet the shortfall, whilst simultaneously trying to limit our own choices that can lead to negative health outcomes. Quitting smoking, reducing alcohol consumption, eating healthily and excercising regularly would all make massive differences.

Unfortunately at present we seem collectively willing to do very little of the above to actually sort the problem, and we seem unable to cross political lines to address the problem in the way it requires. We got the NHS in the first place through reaching a national consensus, and fixing it will require the same.

For those mentioning vaccines, the USA has the highest infant mortality rate in the Western World, but also has the biggest vaccine schedule.

The USA also has a healthcare system that is fantastic for wealthy people with plenty of insurance but pretty dire for those who live in poverty. I don't know the statistics but I suspect that the high infant mortality rate is largely among the poorer sections of society there.

Worrying that it seems to be going the same way in this country according to the information Bertie posted. Although with free access to the NHS, it could be more down to poor post-natal care, poor health during pregnancy, lack of information. I took pregnancy vitamins during both my pregnancies and they were expensive to buy. I think you can get folic acid and Vitamin D on prescription, but I wonder how many pregnant women do this. Also, interventions from midwives and health visitors is minimal once you're home after the birth and you have to actively seek it out these days. I'm sure there are plenty of people who either don't want to attend or can't get to Health Visitor clinics.

Well to be fair a lot of the basis that die do belong to immigrant communities. Many of these communities are disadvantaged and new parents are quote ignorant engaging in harmful practices such a inbreeding, force feeding infants liquefied food, keeping young children indoors worth drawn curtains, circumcision, limited diets etc. When the infant mortality rate is relatively low a small number of deaths can skew the rates significantly. For example of you look up rates of congenital disease in areas with predominantly immigrant Pakistani populations they tend to be significantly higher than the national average. If you remove such areas from the statistics as anomalies you get a very different overall result.

@Crit or you know. We could just set means tested gap payments but that would be too obvious and we all know that the NHS must be free at the point of access to absolutely everyone no matter how many times over they could afford to pay for their care

So change the NHS from the National Health Service to the Welfare Health Service? I think in practical terms that's what is happening now, as those with wealth are taking out BUPA subscriptions, but would you be happy if it was formalised and the best Doctors and Nurses sought careers in private health care?

I think you would see an even greater disparity between the rich and the poor than we have now health wise.

My son is fine thankfully but I was sent for an extra scan not far from the end of pregnancy, only because they couldn't decide what position he was in. He was head down but they said I had to much fluid and turned out I had gestational diabetes. Was never picked up at midwife appointments. Had to be induced at 39 weeks, stay in hospital no water birth. Then when he was born his breathing wasn't right. Hes my 3rd I knew something wasn't right but every person i spoke to on duty over the 2 nights we were in said he was fine, normal. He has a floppy larynx and was in hospital for a month.

A lot of factors increase the rate of infant mortality. Not just vaccination schedule, it is care, hygiene, health and sleeping.

My little girl (youngest of 3) was told by MW she was fine and all babies had blue extremities (haha - pull the other one). When I replied "No, dark blue hands and feet are not normal nor is it fine" MW - "how do you know", me - "I have three children and none of them had blue extremities." She sloped off without answer...

Babies surviving preterm birth who would otherwise have died in the womb (41%) and babies who were born with a condition that ultimately caused their death before one year of age (33.2%) and sudden infant death syndrome (7.3%) make up 79.5% of the infant deaths in 2016.

Sometimes preterm birth can be avoided, but other times, it just happens. Many of the very premature babies that die, do so because the Consultant has told the parents that they can either try to save their extremely premature baby or they can let them go. They've opted for trying to save the baby, given it a go, but the baby was just too weak and small.

The percentage of deaths due to congenital abnormalities could well be higher, but many parents choose to abort when they find out their baby is disabled, so we only see the results of those who either don't know, or find out and still choose to carry to term.

I don't think anti-vaxxers from other countries are invading to make up 21% of the cases, somehow. It will be multifactorial.

prenatal parental behaviour is also a contributory factor - smoking, alcohol, drug abuse all impact on neonatal survival. Anti vaccination is causing the spread of once forgotten diseases to reemerge in the UK. Measles, scarlet fever and mumps are all making a come back. :( Give the child a chance and give them the jabs.