3/1/23, 10:31 AM Improving Survival Of Babies After Birth Will Decrease Population Growth Globally

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Improving Survival Of Babies

After Birth Will Decrease
Population Growth Globally
Anuradha Varanasi Contributor
Anuradha writes about environmental health Follow
disparities & epidemiology

0 Feb 23, 2023, 02:00am EST

Listen to article 4 minutes

TOPSHOT - single mother Jessica Sanz (26) plays with her baby while taking care of him at
her home ... [+] AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

On November 15, 2022, the United Nations reported that the world
population reached 8 billion people. Since then, there have been
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growing concerns about how “overpopulation is a serious threat.”

After all, the Earth has limited resources like clean water and land
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during the ongoing climate crisis — which could make it
challenging to feed and provide for a growing population. While
some have further claimed “eight billion people in the world is a
crisis”, the fact that remains ignored is that the inequitable
distribution of global resources and the lack of access to adequate
health care facilities in developing countries is a far bigger crisis.

Since the 1950s to date, there has been a long-term decline in

fertility rates and the number of children being born worldwide.
Despite that, it is estimated that by 2050, the world’s population
could increase to 9.8 billion. But solely focusing on implementing
population control measures could prove to be inadequate. What is
far more important for enabling family planning is to drastically
reduce infant mortality rates, according to a new study published in
PLOS One.

“Although it sounds counterintuitive, higher baby death rates are

linked to higher population growth because the more babies a
women loses, the more children she is likely to have, which is
known as the so-called ‘replacement’, or ‘insurance’ effect,” said
lead author of the study, Corey Bradshaw, a pediatrician and
professor of global ecology from The University of Western
Australia and Flinders University, in a press release.

The main causes of infant mortality worldwide are premature

births, low-birth weight, pneumonia, birth defects, and birth
trauma or injuries. In developing countries, a large number of
infant deaths are due to diarrheal diseases and severe bacterial
infections.

By 2030, The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals 3

aims to reduce global infant and child mortality (under the age of 5)
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to less than 25 per 1000 live births. But researchers warn that low-
income and middle-income countries are nowhere close to meeting
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that target and preventing or reducing infant deaths.

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Co-author of the study, Chitra Saraswati of The University of

Western Australia’s Medical School said, “Recommendations for
measures to decrease infant mortality emphasize improving the
quality of antenatal care, increasing the number of trained
healthcare staff at births, and improving postnatal care for both
infants and mothers. Given the evidence that large households can
worsen child health, improving living conditions to ameliorate
high-density living could also indirectly result in lower fertility.”

“Interestingly, female education, home visits by health workers,

quality of family planning services, and religious adherence all had
weak, if any, contribution at the scale of entire countries,” she
further added in a Flinders University press release.

The team used publicly available data from 64 different low-income

and middle-income countries to assess which factors could be
contributing to larger household sizes. This included data from
sources like the World Bank, Demographic and Health Surveys,
Family Planning Effort Index, and the World Health Organization
Global Health Observatory, among others. The datasets included
women between the ages of 15 to 49. In their paper, they observed

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that “high infant mortality was most strongly related to high

fertility, followed by reduced access to contraception.”
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To date, more than 222 million women of child-bearing age

globally do not have access to contraceptives and other methods of
family planning. To make matters worse, UN reports found that the
number of men who use condoms or opt for a vasectomy is
decreasing worldwide.

Melinda Judge, a co-author of the study who is from the same

university as her colleagues said: “Keeping babies alive actually
reduced average fertility and helps put the brakes on population
growth. Essentially, higher infant mortality and a larger household
size increased fertility, whereas greater access to any form of
contraception decreased fertility.”
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Anuradha Varanasi is a freelance science writer. She writes on the

intersection of health/medicine, racial disparities, and... Read More

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