Smoking, the Main cause of Infant Mortality

Published on June 26, 2009 3:17 AM

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Smoking cigarettes can harm not only smokers and non-smokers but also unborn children. That’s why Richmond officials started a campaign urging pregnant women not to smoke, in order to reduce the city's high infant mortality rate among African-Americans. Cigarette smoking and early labor are the main cause of low-birth weight babies (less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces). And both are the main risk factors for newborns not making it to their first birthday.

Statistics show that the city's infant mortality rate, at 12.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2007, is higher than the state average of 7.7 deaths for every 1,000 babies born.

This statistic is very troubling for health officials, because infant mortality rate is the fivefold racial disparity. In Richmond, the infant mortality rate for African-American babies is 19 deaths per 1,000 live births compared with about four deaths per 1,000 live births among whites.

Statistics also showed that 41 Richmond infants died before reaching age 1 in 2007, 36 of them black and five white. Rose Stith Singleton of the Richmond Healthy Start Initiative, said: "There are many things that can influence someone having a healthy birth, and we know that smoking is one of those things".

In general infant mortality has declined in the United States during the past two decades, but the black/white gap has extended in some places. Other cities with the same situation as Richmond include Chesapeake, Norfolk and Roanoke. An anti-smoking campaign from the Richmond wants to put posters with the image of a newborn death which will give women "One tiny reason to quit".

Stith Singleton said the project group also wants to run posters on buses with routes in neighborhoods with the highest infant mortality rates.

Scientists explained in a recent survey that they found that 404 pregnant patients at a VCU clinic, about one-third admitted to smoking at some point during their pregnancy.

For other pregnant women quitting is very hard, most of them don’t stop smoking even though they know that cigarette smoke is bad for their children.

For example a pregnant African-American woman said: "I wanted to stop anyway a long time ago, but it was kind of hard". She used to smoke a pack of cigarettes every three to four days.

She added: "Now, since I am pregnant, and I want a healthy baby, I just decided to give them up. I had to choose between cigarettes or my baby's health, so I chose my baby's health."