Cuba shows lowest ever infant mortality rate
Reprinted from Prensa Latina, 2 January 2009.
The Cuban Revolution is celebrating its first half century with an infant mortality rate of 4.7 for every 1,000 live births, the lowest ever achieved by the island state in 50 years, local media reported.
According to the Granma daily, infant mortality rate before 1959 was more than 60 children for every 1,000 births.
Sources from the Mother and Child Care Programme said that no newborn baby died this year in 26 of the country’s 169 municipalities. In nine provinces, the rate was below 5.
With such results, Cuba is leading economic powers such as the United States, whose infant mortality rate was about six for every 1,000 live births in 2008.
Public health minister Jose Ramon Balaguer congratulated health workers for keeping and improving these figures, despite the blockade the United States has been imposing on Cuba since 1961.
