Sep 20 4:09 PM

America's Infant Mortality Crisis

As healthcare spending continues to grow, Fault Lines examines why so many babies are dying in the U.S.

Every year in America over 11,000 babies die on the day that they’re born.

If a baby is African-American, they’re more than twice as likely to die before their first birthday.

Fault Lines travels to Cleveland, Ohio—America’s infant mortality capital—where the rates of premature birth and infant death in many neighborhoods exceed those of developing nations.

Correspondent, Sebastian Walker goes inside the neonatal intensive care unit at Cleveland’s public hospital as doctors rush to save the lives of the city’s preemies.

Fault Lines speaks to mothers experiencing loss and those whose babies are at-risk to find out why, in a country that spends so much on healthcare and believed to have one of the best neo-natal intensive care units in the world, the U.S. is failing to ensure the health of its newest citizens.


Credits:
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Mat Skene (@matmountain), SENIOR PRODUCER: Paul Sapin (@paulsapin) CORRESPONDENT: Sebastian Walker (@sebwalker), CO-PRODUCERS: Joel Van Haren (@joelvanharen) and Anjali Kamat (@anjucomet), DPs: Stephen McGee & Nelson Hume, EDITORS: Leslie Atkins (@leslieatkins), Kris Kral, RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE: Paul Abowd (@PaulAbowd), Spencer Chumbley (@spencerchumbley), Omar Duwaji (@mideasternist), Jonathan Klett (@jonathanklett), Mark Scialla (@markscialla), Nafeesa Sayeed (@NafeesaSyeed)

More From the Episode

The reasons for infant mortality are complex, but what everyone agrees is that poverty plays a part. The rates are worst in the cities of the south and the “rust belt” with their legacies of economic collapse and racial division. And one of the hardest hit cities is Cleveland.

From "America's Infant Mortality Crisis"

Fault Lines on Al Jazeera America

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