A detailed study of Australian baby and infant deaths by region has shown high socio-economic status and distance from hospitals is not always a guarantee of better survival rates.
The Healthy Communities: Child and Maternal Health report released today has found major variations across Australia.
Lower income regional areas like the Nepean-Blue Mountains in New South Wales and Barwon in Victoria have low infant and child death rates similar to or better than many higher-income metropolitan communities.
Bayside in Victoria has the lowest death rate, with 2.2 infant and child deaths for every 1,000 births.
But a child in the Northern Territory is three times more likely to die, with more than nine in every 1,000 children dying before reaching the age of one in the Territory.
Australia’s national rate of infant and child mortality is 4.4 per 1,000 live births.
National Health Performance Authority (NHPA) executive director Martin McNamara says it is the first time such statistics, gathered through 61 Medicare locals, has been collated at the local level.
“National and state level figures can camouflage high rates of child death. They can camouflage high rates of pregnant smokers and low birth weights,” he said.
Dr McNamara says the variations are substantial.
“We see some big differences in young child death rates across similar communities,” he said.
“Child death rates vary even within wealthy areas and within regional areas – almost double from the lowest to the highest.”
For example, in greater metropolitan South Brisbane there were 6.1 deaths per 1,000 births, compared to 2.9 in south-western Melbourne.
Variations in data on smoking during pregnancy, antenatal care
A similar wide range of variations was found in data on low birth-weight, smoking during pregnancy and use of antenatal care between 2009 and 2012.
In middle-income city communities the rate of low birth-weight babies in south-western Melbourne was 41 percent higher than Fremantle in Western Australia.
In high-income city communities, five times more women smoked during pregnancy in the ACT than on Sydney’s north shore.
In the far west of New South Wales 33 per cent of pregnant women smoked.
Maternity Choices spokeswoman Latisha Ryder says the variations are disturbing.
“The question is how the variances are to be addressed. We need midwife lead care to follow women across the medical system,” she said.
“Such primary care in New Zealand, the UK and Canada accounts for all of them having lower infant mortality rates than Australia.”
The Consumers Health Forum of Australia says the poor results for Indigenous children remains a stain on Australia’s standing.
Spokesman Mark Metherell says other variations are remarkable in areas of similar socio-economic status.
“This goes to emphasise the importance of these more localised statistics so that we can see that there is more cause for concern or for comfort where things seem to be done better,” he said.
The Council of Australian Governments requested the study of child and maternal health markers in 2011 after the authority was established by the Rudd government.
Mr Metherell says the Federal Government’s plan to end Medicare locals would be retrograde if such important statistics are no longer gathered to drive health planning.
It may also be one of the last reports of the NHPA – the Government intends to merge the authority with several other bodies into a new organisation which is to replace the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.