Child Mortality Rates Dropping, Study Finds, But U.S. Lags

Childhood death rates are down by 42% in the U.S., but nations such as Serbia and Malaysia which were ranked behind the U.S. in 1990, cut their rates by nearly 70%. “There are an awful lot of people who think we [U.S.] have the best medical system in the world. The data is so contrary to that,” says Dr. Christopher Murray, one of the study’s authors and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. Interestingly, researchers found that high rates of infant mortality exist in the nation’s high-income white demographic, despite having better access to medical care, which begs the question, “what’s wrong with the U.S.’s healthcare system?”