America's infant mortality crisis - Fault Lines - Al Jazeera English

27.9.13

America's infant mortality crisis - Fault Lines - Al Jazeera English: But if a baby is African-American, it is more than twice as likely to die before the first birthday.

"Just under 40 percent of the babies that are born are African-American, but they contribute to 70 percent of the babies who die in the first year of their life. So you have this huge, huge disparity and that's kind of business as usual, it's been going on for decades," says Dr Arthur James, the co-director of Ohio Better Birth Outcomes.

Fault Lines travels to Cleveland, Ohio, America’s 'infant mortality capital' - where the rates of premature birth and infant death in many neighbourhoods exceed those of developing nations. So what is causing these deaths? And what is being done to stop it?

"Every public official will hold up a baby, will talk about how children are our greatest assets, but it seems to some commmunities and the communities that I represent that some babies matter more than others," says Senator Charleta Tavares, who has been working for years to redress racial health disparities in Ohio.