I am confused.  This Dr. Amy lady says that while the infant mortality rate is the highest, the PERINATAL mortality rate is the lowest.  There are two very different sides, and two very different stories, and ONE of them has to be wrong right?  I am just plain confused...

They are two different things. Infant mortality is defined as the number deaths of infants one year of age or younger per 1000 live births. Major causes of infant mortality in developed countries include congenital malformation, infection and SIDS.

Perinatal mortality refers to the death of a fetus or neonaete and is the basis to calculate the perinatal mortality rate. Variations in the precise definition of the perinatal mortality exist specifically concerning the issue of inclusion or exclusion of early fetal and late neonatal fatalities. Thus the WHO‘s definition "Deaths occurring during late pregnancy (at 22 completed weeks gestation and over), during childbirth and up to seven completed days of life" is not universally accepted. The perinatal mortality is the sum of the fetal mortality and the neonatal mortality.

HTH!
maria.

I'm not sure of the context here, but if Amy Tuteur is saying that our perinatal mortality rate is low, that is just not true. They are, in fact, shamefully high for a developed country. They fall woefully short of Healthy People 2010 goals, have been stagnant for years, and are on the rise. In some areas, notably Washington, DC, where there are large populations of low-income black women, our rates rival those of developing countries. Nothing that Tuteur says can be trusted to be sound information. She is well known for selective reporting, taking things out of context, and, um, to put it politely, mistating the facts.

-- Henci