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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Utah's infant mortality rate is increasing.
The most recent state health department data shows Utah's 2006 infant mortality rate was 5 deaths per 1,000 live births. That's up from 4.5 per 1,000 in 2005. Nationally, the rate averages 6.8 deaths per 1,000 births.
State health officials say the reason for the increase is that there are more premature babies being born and they have a greater chance of dying. Increasing obesity rates among pregnant women put babies at risk.
According to the statistics, babies in Logan had the best chance at life, infants in the Avenues neighborhood and parts of downtown Salt Lake City the worst. But experts caution the 2006 figures are a narrow snapshot and that the Avenues had too few infant deaths -- 13 -- to make the comparison meaningful. In 2006, 269 Utah infants died in their first year of life.
The top cause of infant death in Utah is related to prematurity. Other causes are poor maternal health and inadequate prenatal care, birth defects, intentional and unintentional injuries, and sudden infant death syndrome.
Prematurity takes a huge toll on infants, said Lois Bloebaum, manager of the state's Reproductive Health Program. Babies born just weeks early are three times more likely to die than those born on time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"What we're doing is saving infants who probably would have been stillborn before," Bloebaum said. "Now we're saving them at earlier and earlier gestational ages, providing intensive care, and some of them make it and some of them don't."
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
