Deficit Act Called Threat to Child Health Services

The president of the Children’s Defense Fund said Thursday that “the insanity” of Gramm-Rudman budget-cutting is the equivalent of playing “Russian roulette with the lives of poor infants.”

Marion Wright Edelman released a 302-page compendium of children’s health statistics that she said should dissuade the Reagan Administration and Congress from cutting “even another penny” from health and nutrition programs for needy mothers and children.

The group said that children’s health and nutrition programs face cuts under the Gramm-Rudman deficit act that will deny more than 150,000 mothers and children access to a physician this year.

Program Cutbacks

Sara Rosenbaum, a Children’s Defense Fund official, said areas subject to cuts include vaccination programs; block grants for health; community and migrant health centers; family planning, and the National Health Service Corps, which provides physicians for the health centers.

The Gramm-Rudman cuts in community health centers and the health service corps alone will mean about 250,000 fewer patient visits this year, she said. Of those affected, two-thirds will be mothers or children and 80% will be poor.

“We are absolutely stunned by the insanity of Gramm-Rudman,” Edelman added.

The fund’s data book said infant mortality, considered a sensitive indicator of a nation’s health status, no longer is declining at the 5% annual rate it maintained for a decade. Although still falling, the rate has slowed to 3% a year. The infant-mortality rate records the number of children who die before reaching age 1.

Mortality Rate

Deaths of infants who survived their first month but died before their first birthday actually rose by 3% nationwide from 1982 to 1983, the largest increase in 18 years, the group said.

The Children’s Defense Fund said the gap between white and black infant mortality rates is the widest in more than 40 years. A black infant is twice as likely to die in the first year of life as a white one.

“I think it’s shameful that in 1983, a black infant in Chicago, Cleveland or Detroit was more likely to die in the first year of life than an infant born in Costa Rica,” Edelman said.