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)
“Language was not powerful enough to describe the infant phenomenon. “I’ll tell you what, sir,” he said; “the talent of this child is not to be imagined. She must be seen, sir—seen—to be ever so faintly appreciated.”... The infant phenomenon, though of short stature, had a comparatively aged countenance, and had moreover been precisely the same age—not perhaps to the full extent of the memory of the oldest inhabitant, but certainly for five good years.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“When I turned into a parent, I experienced a real and total personality change that slowly shifted back to the “normal” me, yet has not completely vanished. I believe the two levels are now superimposed, with an additional sprinkling of mortality intimations.”
—Sonia Taitz (20th century)
“At this very moment,... the most frightful horrors are taking place in every corner of the world. People are being crushed, slashed, disembowelled, mangled; their dead bodies rot and their eyes decay with the rest. Screams of pain and fear go pulsing through the air at the rate of eleven hundred feet per second. After travelling for three seconds they are perfectly inaudible. These are distressing facts; but do we enjoy life any the less because of them? Most certainly we do not.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)