Public health: someone must have been doing something right!

Table 1 illustrates the change in infant mortality rates, according to WHO statistics. Across a wide geographic and economic range, many countries have made substantial progress, partly due to improvements in sanitation and control of infectious diseases but also due to an improved nutritional situation. Even within a country with a comparatively low infant mortality rate in 1960 like Sweden, the infant mortality rate can be pushed down even further by a conscious policy to invest in a highquality Mother and Child Health Care programme. Apparently someone is doing something right.