J Korean Med Sci.  2011 Sep;26(9):1115-1123. 10.3346/jkms.2011.26.9.1115.

Decreasing Trends of Neonatal and Infant Mortality Rates in Korea: Compared with Japan, USA, and OECD Nations

• Chang JY
• Lee KS
• Hahn WH
• Chung SH
• Choi YS
• Shim KS
• Bae CW

• KMID: 1779382
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2011.26.9.1115

Abstract

Neonatal mortality rate (NMR) and infant mortality rate (IMR) are two of the most important indices reflecting the level of public health of a country. In this review, we investigated changes in NMR and IMR in Korea and compared the results with those of Japan, USA, and OECD nations. During the past 20 yr, NMR and IMR have lowered remarkably from 6.6 and 9.9 in 1993 to 1.7 and 3.2 in 2009, respectively, in Korea. It is an impressive finding that Korean IMR (3.2 in 2009) is lower than the average of OECD nations (4.7 in 2008), and USA (6.3 in 2009), although higher than Japanese IMR (2.8 in 2009). The proportion of NMR among the IMR calculation decreased from 66.7% in 1993 to 53.1% in 2009. The reason the value of Korea was higher than Japan but lower than USA was speculated to be an aspect of the health care service system. Several suggestions in perinatal, neonatal and infantile health care such as establishment of perinatal care center, research network system, regionalization, and new policies for care of pre-term and high risk pregnancy, are elucidated to achieve further improvement on NMR and IMR in Korea.

Keyword

Public health; Epidemiologic methods; Data collection; Vital statistics; Mortality; Infant mortality; Neonatal mortality; Korea; Japan; United States; OECD; Epidemiology

MeSH Terms

Female
Health Services
Humans
Infant
Infant Mortality/*trends
Infant, Newborn
Japan
Perinatal Care
Pregnancy
Pregnancy, High-Risk
Public Health
Republic of Korea
United States

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Estimates of Korean infant mortality rate reported by the United Nations (Sources: reference 5).

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  Fig. 2 Changes in infant and neonatal mortality rate in Korea from 1993 to 2009. Significant improvement of mortality rates was found. *Data from the Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare; †data from Statistics Korea (Sources: reference 2-15).

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  Fig. 3 The proportion of neonatal mortality rate in infant mortality rate in Korea from 1993 to 2009. Even though recently the ratio of neonatal mortality rate to infantile mortality rate shows decreasing tendency, it still occupies more than half of infantile mortality rate. *data from the Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare; †Data from Statistics Korea (Sources: reference 2-15).

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  Fig. 4 The infant mortality rates of OECD nations in 2008. The mean infant mortality rate of Korea is 3.4 in comparison with 4.7 of OECD nations (Source: reference 18). *The USA in 2006; †Canada and Ireland in 2007.

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  Fig. 5 Comparison of infant mortality rate data between Korea and the mean IMR of OECD nations. Korea shows lower infantile mortality rate than OECD nations for past 20 yr (Sources: reference 16, 17).

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  Fig. 6 Changes of infant mortality rate in Korea, Japan and the USA for past 20 yr. Korean infantile mortality rate is lower than data of the USA, but higher than data of Japan. *1993, †1996, ‡1999 (Sources: reference 19-22).

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  Fig. 7 The proportion of neonatal mortality rate in infant mortality rate in Korea, Japan, and the USA in late 2000s. The ratio of neonatal mortality rate to infant mortality rate in Korea is lower than the USA, but higher than Japan (Sources: reference 19-22).

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