Servicio de salud para madres y niños indios, Esquimales y Aleutianos de Estados Unidos

Abstract

The first year of life is full of danger for the North-American Indian baby, just as it is in Mexico. Infant mortality and morbidity are still major problems. Respiratory, digestive, and nutritional difficulties claim the highest toll among infants. Contributing factors are meager family income, isolation, environmental hazards, and cultural differences that preclude easy acceptance of modern medicine and public health services. So many combining factors produce a health status among the North-American Indian that approximates the rest of the United States a generation ago

Most illnesses and one-sixth of the deaths among the Indians result from preventable communicable diseases. Infants are especially susceptible to premature death from such diseases as gastroenteritis, diarrhea of the newborn, influenza, pneumonia, and other respiratory infections. Twenty one percent of all Indian deaths in a single year occur among babies less than a year old. Indian babies fare well during the early weeks of life, but in the period between one month of age and the baby's first birthday, the death rate exceeds the mortality rate for infants of all races by almost three and one half times. (The Alaska natives rate is over four times greater.) The Indian infant mortality rate of about 43 per 1,000 live births is now less than twice the rate for the general population, having dropped during the last decade ...(AU)