Infant Mortality Rate
Infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths of children less than one year of age per 1000 live births. The rate in a given region, therefore, is the total number of newborns dying under one year of age divided by the total number of live births during the year, then all multiplied by 1,000.
There are various forms of infant mortality. Neonatal, or newborn death is mortality occurring within 28 days postpartum. Neonatal death is often attributed to inadequate access to basic medical care during and after the mother delivers her newborn. It accounts for 40-60% of infant mortality in developing countries. Postneonatal infant mortality occurs when the child is 29 days to a year old. Biggest contributors to postneonatal deaths are malnutrition, infectious disease, and home environment. Perinatal mortality occurs in the late fetal period, which typically occurs after 28 weeks gestation and the first week postpartum.
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Famous quotes containing the words infant mortality, infant, mortality and/or rate:
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)
“Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Antiquity breached mortality with myths.
Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates
A cornice on the Third National Bank.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)