Infant mortality in Vietnam 1955-2020

In 1955, the infant mortality rate in Vietnam was just over one hundred deaths per thousand live births, meaning that approximately one of every ten babies born in that year would not survive past their first birthday. Infant mortality would decrease sharply between the 1950s and 1960s, falling to nearly half the 1955 rate by 1970. Declines in infant mortality would slow somewhat in the early 1970s, however, as a decrease of American aid to South Vietnam following President Nixon’s resignation, combined with increasing encroachment by the North Vietnamese army and a recession from the 1973 oil crisis, would place significant strain on many basic health and government services of the South Vietnamese government. Following the fall of Saigon in 1975 and the reunification of Vietnam, child mortality would begin to decline once more, as the country would begin to rapidly modernize in the post-war years. As a result, infant mortality would halve between 1975 and the end of the century, and as infant mortality continues to decline, it is estimated in 2020 that for every thousand children born in Vietnam, over 98% will survive past their first birthday.