Infant Mortality and Morbidity

As an example, for the 20 pct of low birth burden infants who experience lingering disabilities recent the first year of life, the need for extraordinary c be ranges from modified educational programs to lifelong institutionalization (McCormick, 1985). In 1983, the estimated total court of neonatal intensive care in the join States was $3.1 matchless railyard thousand (Minnesota Coalition on Health Care Costs, 1985). The care everyplace a lifetime for one LBW infant can strive $400 thousand (The National Commission to Prevent child Mortality, 1988).

Low Birth burthen Incidence in the joined States

The proportion of live births with low weight in the United States did not decrease by any significant storey between 1960 and 1989, hovering around sevenpercent over the trinity decades (see Figure 1, which may be found on the hunting page). The ratios reported nationally increased slowly from 77 LBW infants per onethousand live births (7.7 percent) in 1960 to 83 per onethousand in 1965, subsequent to which

Proportion of Low Birth Weight Infants United States: 19601989

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LBW Infants as a Proportion of Live Births

8.1%| / | / 7.9%| / | / 7.7%| /

Work performed by pregnant women international of the home is one factor which has been identified as a potential causal agent in low weight births. Within this context, therefore, the study of the type and characteristics of work performed by women immaterial of the home is important for two primary reasons. First, the increasing yield of women in the workforce, many of whom will experience pregnancy during their operative years, continues to contribute to changes in the magnitude of the problem. Working women are often thought to be at low assay for health occupations, because of an acceptance of the healthy worker belief sentiment, which is ground on an assumption that people who work are somehow inherently more healthy than are nonemployed persons.

Frequently, however, these assumed low risk women give birth to LBW infants, thus, confounding the concept of the healthy worker effect. Second, the ineffectiveness of efforts to lower the rate of LBW infants in the United States indictates a need for a continuing inquisition for the development of relationships between variables which will, in turn, facilitate the development of solutions to the problem.

Investigation of the problem of LBW is complicated by the great number of factors suspected of having an effect on birth weight, including genetic and environmental characteristics, maternal conditions, or events occurring during pregnancy. A total of 32 such factors have been associated in some way and to some degree with LBW infants. Barron, & Thomson (1983) implicated twain biological variables (maternal age, and weight gain during pregnancy), and environmental variables (socioeconomic status, climate, and so forth) as factors influencing 20

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Organizations in Europe led the way in setoff discussions of the effects work might have on pregnant women. The CIBA Foundation (1974) conducted a symposium on the topic of size at birth in London in 1974
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