Liz Essley Whyte and Josh Ulick:
The nation’s infant-mortality rate rose 3% from 2021 to 2022, reversing a decadeslong overall decline, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday. The rate increased from 5.44 infant deaths for every 1,000 births to 5.6 in 2022, a statistically significant uptick.
The U.S. rate is double that of many developed countries. Globally, baby death rates have fallen for decades, though five countries that have reported their rates this year recorded increases for last year.
The death rate for women who give birth has also been rising in the U.S. Researchers who study the issues said the pair of trends indicate more women giving birth are facing challenges getting proper care.
“The U.S. is falling behind on a basic indicator of how well societies treat people,” said Arjumand Siddiqi, a University of Toronto professor who studies population health. “In a country as well-resourced as the U.S., with as much medical technology and so on, we shouldn’t have babies dying in the first year of life. That should be super rare, and it’s not.”
The health of the mother is closely linked to the risks to tiny infants. Complications during pregnancy was one of the fastest-rising causes of infant death, the CDC said, along with dangerous bacterial infections called sepsis. Sepsis in newborns can occur when babies contract infections from their mothers during birth, or when a bacteria infects an infant at home who isn’t immediately treated for it.