A study of Plains American Indians turns up some chilling facts on infant death. The journal of the American Medical society has the report in this week’s edition. SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is by definition the loss of a baby that’s unexplained after all injury, illness and other factors have been looked into. The study of American Indian mothers who drank alcohol while pregnant concluded it increased the risk their babies would die of sudden infant death syndrome. The risk decreased if the mother got a visit from a public health nurse, either before or after having the baby. The study was done in Nebraska, Iowa and the Dakotas region where native Americans have a higher SIDS rate than any other area in the country. There were seven deaths for every two-thousand live births from 1996 to 1998.
