Governor kicks off regional meeting on infant mortality

NORFOLK

Calling infant mortality one of the state's biggest weaknesses, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine kicked off a regional forum Friday to find solutions to move Virginia up from the basement.

He said a state with the fifth-highest median income in the nation should not have an infant mortality rate that ranks 32nd in the country, a level that has stagnated during the past decade.

"We have barely moved the needle on infant mortality," he said.

The meeting of community and health experts that convened at the Hilton Norfolk Airport was funded by four local health districts and the March of Dimes.

In 2006, Hampton Roads had a rate of 9.5 infant deaths per 1,000 births, compared with the state's rate of 7.1 per 1,000. There were sharp disparities between white and black infants. In Hampton Roads, for instance, there were 14.4 black infant deaths per 1,000 births, compared with a rate of 6.6 among whites.

Strategies discussed at the forum included more prenatal care, better sleep practices for infants, improved nutrition and more substance abuse prevention.

The biggest contributors to infant deaths in Hampton Roads are premature birth, congenital defects and sudden infant death syndrome.

Dr. David Trump, director of the Peninsula Health District, said practices such as in-vitro fertilization - in which eggs are retrieved, fertilized and implanted into a woman's uterus - also play a role because they produce more multiple births, which create a higher risk for early death.

Trump said this region led the nation in developing in-vitro fertilization technology and now must use its expertise to meet the challenge of improving the health of those babies.

The percentage of multiple births in Hampton Roads increased from 2.6 percent of all births in 1995 to 3.7 percent in 2006.

Trump said that the focus in the past has been on teen mothers, who are at higher risk of having premature and low-weight babies, but that older mothers also need attention. They are more likely to have infertility treatments and also more likely to have chronic health problems than mothers in their 20s and early 30s.

Participants in the forum recommended more study of the impact of the increasing rates of Cesarean-section births and rising rates of obesity.

Elizabeth Simpson, (757) 446-2635, elizabeth.simpson@pilotonline.com