Infant Mortality and Prenatal Care
In saving th
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In saving the lives of infants, America ranks 19th among the nations of the world. Considering white babies and black babies separately results in whites rising to 11th while blacks fall to 21st. Each year, 40,000 American babies die before age 1. Most babies who face early life problems are born too small and too soon. This is because many mothers do not get decent care and guidance during their pregnancy. In some parts of the country, distance from a doctor or hospital is a problem; in other parts, medical personnel are in short supply. Some physicians are unwilling to accept high-risk patients out of fear of malpractice suits. Other doctors are reluctant to accept poor patients if they anticipate that their bills will not be paid or that they will receive inadequate reimbursement from public insurance programs. Shortcomings in the delivery of services are only one aspect of the dilemma. Some pregnant women fail to appreciate the need for early prenatal care or the importance of changing behavior--smoking or drug use--which affect not only the mother's health, but also that of the fetus. The problem is not just the number of infant deaths. Infant mortality is the symptom, and the cause is the difficulty in reaching women who fall into the classically "at risk" categories. Part of recognizing the problem is defining the players. Thirty percent of America's workforce are women of child-bearing age. One million babies are born to these women each year. Today'
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ey need. Even if a woman makes it through the Medicaid maze and receives the necessary certification, in most states Medicaid does not cover most necessary services.
Another point of intervention is clinics: those operated by the health department; hospital outpatient facilities; and community and migrant health centers. But poor women depend disproportionately on these clinics. Two major public programs support clinics that provide maternity care primarily to poor women, some of whom have Medicaid, most of whom do not. One is the state-administered Maternal and Child Health program, financed jointly by federal and state governments, for poor women and children. The second is a federal program that supports more than 560 community and migrant health centers. A majority of these centers' clients are uninsured (57 percent) and below the poverty level (64 percent), and the centers also serve a large teen population (34 percent).
These problems are not insurmountable. Japan has proved there is a solution to the problems of high infant deaths and low birthweight births. But it was not technical know-how that moved Japan from 17th to its present #1 ranking among nations. Japan made healthy infants an active issue in 19
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Today's American, Human Services, , Prenatal Care, Child Health, Discrimination Act, Children's Charter, Korea Vietnam, Los Angeles, League WIC, prenatal care, pregnant women, infant mortality, maternity care, infant care, poor women, maternity infant care, maternity infant, women infants, national urban league, washington dc, migrant health, migrant health centers, private insurance policies, community migrant health,
Approximate Word count = 1806
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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