Figures correspond with rising child poverty rate
Eduardo Cuevas
USA TODAY
A teenager delivered a baby boy in fetal distress at 25 weeks gestation. Doctors tried to resuscitate the child – with ventilation, cardiac compressions, chest tubes and other methods – to no avail. The neonatologist later discovered the mother had a previously undiagnosed case of syphilis.
The baby’s death at a Wisconsin hospital illustrates dangers babies face in their first year of life. It’s also the type of scenario doctors are examining as they try to understand a grim new trend. For the first time in two decades, the number of U.S. infants who died in their first year of life is on the rise, according to provisional data from the National Center for Health Statistics, or NCHS.