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Having a low child mortality is important, and we've done so many good things in the last couple of decades, but I'm starting to think we're at the point now where the money you have to spend to make a meaningful difference is better spent in other areas of health care.

A classical example of this is in Norway. There's nothing that gives you access to more resources than being pregnant or being in care of a newborn. You can suffer from all kinds of mental health issues for your entire life, struggle to be a productive member of society and be in and out of temporary treatment and be on social benefits. But the moment someone is pregnant they get will be top priority for anything that is even remotely connected with child mortality, almost regardless of how benign something is.

I personally know several people that finally got the help they had been so desperately been begging for, just because they got pregnant. We could have saved them from literal decades of suffering by just providing good treatment early. I'm willing to bet that we'd even be in a position to spend even more money on reducing child mortality, because when you start doing the math of how much they ended up costing society it really adds up.



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