Scary statistics

goulnik
 October 30, 2007, 01:51 PM posted in General Discussion

According to a Xinhua report , a baby is born with birth defects every 30 seconds in China.

Birth defects in China have increased by nearly 40 percent since 2001, according to statistics from the country's birth deformity monitoring center.

The figure was cited in a recent report by Jiang Fan, deputy head of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, at a conference in Chengdu, capital city of Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

... the rate of defects among all Chinese infants rose from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001 to 145.5 in 2006, affecting nearly one in every 10 Chinese households.

 ... of the 20 million babies born in China every year, 800,000 to 1.2 million of them are afflicted with defects. As many as 300,000 of these are "visible deformities". This means that birth deformities affect up to 6 percent of the children born every year on the Chinese mainland.

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goulnik
 October 30, 2007, 01:52 PM

Not sure how this compares to Western countries though, haven't had time to look at comparable incidence figures, not even sure they're available (WHO maybe?). In any event, here's the full report

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henning
 October 30, 2007, 02:19 PM

The "Spiegel" compared the 6%-figure with the German equivalent - 1.4%. According to the report the global average is 3-5%: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,514402,00.html

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azerdocmom
 October 30, 2007, 03:35 PM

That is a remarkable statistic, one that both frighten and saddens me.

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TaiPan
 October 30, 2007, 06:34 PM

I wonder how it breaks down in areas of industrialization vs. rural areas. Haven't birth defects been one of the most tell-tale signs of polution and chemicals being introduced into the food and water supplies worldwide for the last few generations?

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christian
 October 30, 2007, 10:14 PM

Interesting link, Goulniky, and chilling numbers... One of the themes of the recent communist party congress was the need to address pollution issues to reign in public discontent over the matter, lest it boil over someday. Some at least some high placed officials are worrying over it. I read somewhere that China is expected to be one of the big producers of environmentally friendly technology in the future, precisely due to these worries. Countries like Germany and Denmark are making pushes to develop competitive technologies to export to the Chinese market for them, when it ripens. It would be a great link to share, but I'm afraid I haven't been able to find it. I just remember Stiglitz penned it. Maybe someone with more time than me right now can dig it up.

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bento
 October 31, 2007, 12:22 AM

China could make better use of the resources of its space program, they're set to the moon, in a pollution reduction program. Globaly I think that there are too many things that are too cheap, we use them to much and pollution comes along. Every country should over tax energy and resource intensive products, like fuels, aluminium, copper and steel. If prices were higher we would drive less, use less package and so on. The collected taxes could offset other tax cuts, and so the economy wouldn't suffer to much. It's always a pity to give more money to the government, but I hate air pollution and hydroelectric dams.