The media is going ape over a bridge collapse that has killed perhaps a dozen people with graphics and extended articles. George W. Bush is making a personal visit to survey the scene and wrinkle his brow in a pantomime of care. Congress is appropriating extra money in the wake of the disaster.

No doubt, the collapse of the bridge is a disaster for those five Americans who are known to have been killed, and for those who know those killed in the event. But as Red Dave points out in his diary posts, six more American soldiers died in the last day of military action in Iraq, and approximately 130 more Iraqi civilians were killed on the same day. These are deaths which will be repeated tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. And yet in the face of these daily death tolls we still have politicians in Washington who treat policies of war as if they are solutions and not problems.

There are other disasters we don’t see. Consider UNICEF’s 2007 State of the World’s Children report, which indicates that in 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available) the death rate of children under 5 in the United States was 7 for every 1,000 children. Census Bureau statistics indicate that U.S. population under 5 in 2005 was about 20,300,000 — which gives us 142,100 deaths per year. That’s a lot of deaths.

Now, many of those deaths are sadly unpreventable, but some are. You can tell this because the UNICEF report tells us of many nations where the death rate of children under 5 is lower than in the United States. Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, and Japan, for instance, have a death rate of just 4 children per 1,000 under the age of 5. These are all nations with universal health care systems. If the United States were able to lower its death rate for children under 5 from 7 per 1,000 to 4 per 1,000, 81,200 lives could be saved annually.

Let me say that again. If the United States could become like Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway or Japan, the lives of 81,200 children under the age of five could be saved every year.

The legislators and executive officials in Washington, DC who are worth their salt know this. But what has been done in the face of these tens of thousands of preventable deaths of young children? This a real disaster, and it’s high time we mobilized ourselves to address it.

(Sources: UNICEF 2007 State of the World’s Children; U.S. Census Bureau; New York Times August 4 2007; Associated Press August 4 2007)