Welcome to the following bloggers

A warm welcome to the following bloggers:

b-loss-om
How I Really Feel*
Hopeful Heart*
Too Beautiful For Earth*
Living By Faith
Cradles and Graves*
My Healing Heart*
Stay at Home Mommy Daze*
Ella's Halo

Premature Births Are Fueling Higher Rates of Infant Mortality in U.S

Premature Births Are Fueling Higher Rates of Infant Mortality in U.S., Report Says
By DENISE GRADY
Published: November 3, 2009

High rates of premature birth are the main reason the United States has higher infant mortality than do many other rich countries, government researchers reported Tuesday in their first detailed analysis of a longstanding problem.

In Sweden, for instance, 6.3 percent of births were premature, compared with 12.4 percent in the United States in 2005, the latest year for which international rankings are available. Infant mortality also differed markedly: for every 1,000 births in the United States, 6.9 infants died before they turned 1, compared with 2.4 in Sweden. Twenty-nine other countries also had lower rates.

If the United States could match Sweden’s prematurity rate, the new report said, “nearly 8,000 infant deaths would be averted each year, and the U.S. infant mortality rate would be one-third lower.”

The first author of the report, Marian F. MacDorman, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics, said in an interview that the strong role prematurity played came as a surprise to her. More