The Incredible Challenge of Counting Every Global Birth and Death

Nowhere are the disparities more apparent than in health care. Technically, it has long been available to all, thanks to the universal health care law passed when Andrés and Marleny were children. But in practice, the barriers to access are often insurmountable: a lack of reliable transportation; clinics that are understaffed and often difficult to reach; doctors and nurses who can be hostile to the Black and Indigenous communities they serve; and a bureaucratic thicket of referrals and authorizations that exacerbates all those things. Eliad spent nearly a month in intensive care in Puerto . . .