Greene County Memorial Hospital have started a program to give boxes of supplies to pregnant women. Courtesy photo
LINTON — Can something as simple as a sturdy cardboard box help reduce the number of infants who die in rural southwestern Indiana?
Nurses at Greene County General Hospital believe it can, and they are starting a program that encourages pregnant women to take good care of themselves, and then their babies once they are born.
The Sweet Dreams Baby Bundle initiative is ready to launch. It’s based on a tradition that originated in Finland in 1938, when the country took on a growing infant mortality rate by giving new mothers a simple baby-sized sleeping box lined with a mattress.
The approximately 36-by-30-inch boxes contained layette items such as diapers, a sheet, a blanket and, back then, fabric to make clothing. Today they have ready-made clothes and a thermometer and other health care items.
Finland’s infant mortality rate dropped over the next 75 years, from 65 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1938 to 3 per 1,000 in 2013.
Data from Indiana’s health department ranks the state 39th in the proportion of deaths of children younger than 12 months, with an infant mortality rate of about 7 per 1,000 live births. The collective rate for the eight counties in the Wabash Valley — Clay, Greene, Owen, Parke, Putnam, Sullivan, Vigo and Vermillion — is 8.9 per 1,000.
Smoking by expectant mothers also affects the health of newborns. The prenatal smoking rate statewide is 17.1 percent. It’s 27.8 percent in Greene County, data show, and 33 percent in nearby Owen County, the region’s highest rate.
Data gathered by the state indicates that sleep positions also contribute to the infant mortality rate. In the rural counties in the Wabash Valley, 14.5 percent of infant deaths are due to suffocation, compared with 3.5 percent statewide.
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