Infant Mortality up in U.S., Government Finds

By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) Feb 12 - While Americans' life expectancy rose again in 2002, the infant mortality rate also rose slightly in what may be a statistical blip, U.S. government statisticians reported on Wednesday.

Overall life expectancy in the United States reached a new high of 77.4 years, up from 77.2 in 2001, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.

It said life expectancy increased for men and women, and for blacks and whites.

But infant mortality increased from a rate of 6.8 infant deaths per 1000 live births in 2001 to a rate of 7.0 per 1000 births in 2002. It was the first year since 1958 that the rate has not declined or remained unchanged.

The report showed that deaths from SIDS continued to fall.

The rise in infant mortality may have been just a blip, according to statisticians who said figures from the first 9 months of 2003 were beginning to suggest this was the case.

Joyce Martin, an expert on poor birth outcome who worked on the report, said the reasons for the rise were not clear. "We simply do not know yet. We don't have all that information," she said in a telephone interview.

Deaths among newborns younger than 28 days were mostly due to birth defects, maternal complications and disorders related to premature delivery and low birth weight.

Martin said it was possible the deaths among very young infants were a statistical anomaly.

"We also found the late fetal mortality rate--deaths at 28 weeks gestation or later--also declined at a slightly greater pace than they had in the past," she said.

"What very well may be happening, at least to some extent, is some of those infants that might have died before delivery are being born but dying shortly after birth."

Overall the NCHS recorded 27,977 infant deaths nationwide in 2002, up from 27,568 in 2001, out of about 4 million births a year.

"Factors such as low birth weight, preterm births and multiple births all increase the risk of infant death," NCHS director Dr. Edward Sondik said in a statement. "This year, some of these risk factors may have played a significant role in the increase in infant deaths, but we'll know more as additional data become available."

Among adults, deaths from heart disease, the No. 1 killer, fell 3% and deaths from stroke, the No. 3 killer, also fell 3%. Deaths from cancer, the second leading cause of mortality, fell 1%.

But mortality rates rose for Alzheimer's, influenza and pneumonia and septicemia.

The annual death rate decreased slightly from 855 deaths per 100,000 people in 2001 to 847 deaths per 100,000 in 2002.

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