Infant+Mortality

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The death of an infant before his or her first birthday. p.94
Death within the firs year of life p.525 HGD HGD Chapter 4, p. 94

__Examples:__
The infant mortality rate is, by definition, the number of children dying under a year of age divided by the number of live births that year. The infant mortality rate is also called the infant death rate. __** Not the same as SIDS. **__

Congenital anomalies Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) - This is a phenomenon in which an apparently healthy infant dies suddenly and unexpectedly. []

Are certain babies at a higher risk for SIDS?

 * Although the exact cause of SIDS is unknown, some risk factors have been identified. They include:

**Being born prematurely or at a very low birth weight**

 * The earlier a baby is born, the higher his risk of SIDS. Likewise, the lower his birth weight, the higher the risk.

**Being born to a mother under the age of 20**

 * Teen moms are more likely than moms over 20 to have a child die of SIDS.

**Having a lot of siblings, especially if they are close in age**

 * The risk of SIDS increases with each baby you have. Also, the shorter the time between a woman's pregnancies, the higher her baby's risk of SIDS.

**Suffering an apparent life-threatening event (ALTE)**

 * Babies who have suffered what's called an apparent life-threatening event (stopped breathing and turned pale, blue, and limp and required resuscitation) have a higher risk of SIDS.

**Certain ethnic backgrounds**

 * SIDS rates are highest for African Americans and American Indians and lowest for Asians and Hispanics. The rates of SIDS among African Americans, American Indians, and Alaska natives are more than double that of Caucasian infants.
 * Some researchers hypothesize that a cultural preference for putting babies to sleep on their stomach puts certain groups at higher risk.

**Being a boy**

 * Boys of all ethnicities are at slightly higher risk than girls, by a ratio of 1.5 to 1.

**Women with WIC**

 * Hurley has a Women, Infants and Children program on site at the hospital to allow new mothers to enroll in WIC services.media type="custom" key="23483446"

__Analogies:__
__**Infant mortality **__ > > __**‍‍SIDS‍‍**__ > >
 * 1) The number of deaths among live born infants from birth to under age 1. The infant mortality rate is, by definition, the number of children dying under a year of age divided by the number of live births that year. The infant mortality rate is also called the infant death rate.
 * 1) Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)  is the sudden death of an infant under age 1 that cannot be explained after a thorough investigation has been conducted, including a complete autopsy, an examination of the death scene, and a review of the clinical history.

__Mnemonics:__
[insert mnemonics here] (give a mnemonic in place of the bracketed text above, then delete these instructions. If you don't know of any examples, leave this section unchanged for someone else to improve on.)

__In the News:__
Alabama Infant mortality rate drops

[|India]
[|Somalia]

[|Little Change In Infant Mortality Rate] The Centers for Disease Control's latest infant mortality statistics show no major changes in the infant mortality rate between 2003 and 2004.

In 2004, the U.S. infant mortality rate in 2004 was 6.78 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. That's the lowest infant mortality rate ever reported by the CDC. But the 2004 infant mortality rate was not much lower than the 2003 infant mortality rate of 6.84 infants per 1,000 live births. The difference between the 2003 and 2004 infant mortality rates was so small that it may have been due to chance.

The CDC also lists the five leading causes of infant death in 2004: > > Another CDC report estimates that 36 percent of all U.S. infant deaths in 2004 were related to preterm births. > > Preterm births accounted for one in eight births in 2004 and have been rising in the United States since the mid-1980s, according to the CDC.
 * Birth defects
 * Disorders related to short gestation and low birth weight
 * Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
 * Newborn affected by maternal complications
 * Accidents

media type="youtube" key="r_xTwOfbq0Q" height="315" width="560" ‍‍ []‍‍

Five out of every 1,000 white babies and seven out of every 1,000 Hispanic infants nationwide die before their first birthdays. Among Michigan's black population, the infant mortality rate is 14 out of every 1,000 babies born.

The Infant Mortality Reduction Plan lists eight "strategies and goals" for 2012-15.

Breastfeeding can reduce infant mortality rate