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Few-School-3869 t1_jd4nmiz wrote

Indian people are living in the midst of risk factors for birth defects, e.g., universality of marriage, high fertility, large number of unplanned pregnancies, poor coverage of antenatal care, poor maternal nutritional status, high consanguineous marriages rate, and high carrier rate for hemoglobinopathies. Lack of prenatal/antenatal care is a huge reason. 70 percent of birth defects are preventable through community genetic services!

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4B1T t1_jd4rnnd wrote

Great response, also pollutants.

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gnalon t1_jd94z78 wrote

Also it is the most populous country on Earth, so obviously for any type of person you can imagine, a lot of them will be from India.

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bearrryallen t1_jd5n7uw wrote

What does universality of marriage mean? Googling it says it's essentially marrying outside of your own culture - if I'm reading it right. Wouldn't that be the opposite of inbreeding? Which is what you don't want to happen?

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aqhgfhsypytnpaiazh t1_jd6qi18 wrote

If you read it as "universality of marriage" is the risk factor, a lack of it would be the risk in this case.

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Lithuim t1_jd4nlrx wrote

The gigantic population certainly helps, they have four times the sample size as the US.

Then there’s the mix of medical care that’s good enough to keep these deathly ill infants alive but not good enough to fix them and an abundance of cell phones to capture it.

Places that are even more impoverished might not keep such an unlucky infant alive long enough to document it. Places that are wealthier will fix it surgically.

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x1uo3yd t1_jd4oixw wrote

Yes, one part of it is due to the sheer size of the population leading to larger total numbers (even if incidence rate is equal to other parts of the world).

Another part of it is the fact that some religions there venerate children with certain visible deformities - they take it as a sign of being blessed/touched by the gods. This means that these children are showcased prominently, rather than being cloistered away for sake of pity or shame. So, even if the numbers are comparable to other parts of the world, they are more visible or more often encountered.

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PapaHemmingway t1_jd4p9x2 wrote

Unsafe living conditions play a big factor, with India having a very poor waste management system and rampant pollution of rivers like the Ganges, where many people still get their drinking water.

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NNovis t1_jd5mtbl wrote

There is some good answers here but something I'm not seeing is that, frankly, you're not studying the statistical likelihood of deformities in a population. You're seeing pictures or news articles or social media posts and social media has a bias for trying to get the most clicks through outrage or shock or awe or sex, whatever. So how you came to see those instances aren't representative of what's happening in reality.

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PapaHemmingway t1_jd4pby4 wrote

Unsafe living conditions play a big factor, with India having a very poor waste management system and rampant pollution of rivers like the Ganges, where many people still get their drinking water.

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