Caption: (A profile of the victims) Dr. Richard Smith, a director of Henry Ford Hospital's adolescent pregnancy program, believes early medical screening, counseling and follow –up have resulted in fewer deaths in the program. He said there have been only five deaths out of about 500 births in the last two years. Of the 424 mothers in Detroit who lost infants in 1979 (the last year for which detailed figures are available), nearly 80 percent were black, according to a computer analysis of statistics done by the state Public Health Department for the Free Press. (Sixty – nine percent of all births in Detroit in 1970 were black). They were women of all ages, but the young shouldered the greatest burden. Mothers between 15 and 19 years of age had an infant mortality 20 percent higher than city's average. (The rate for black teenagers was 50 percent higher than for whites the same age.) About one percent of all mothers who gave birth in 1979 in Detroit – 386 women – did not see a doctor until the day of their delivery, Among these women, the infant mortality rate was 88 percent, four times the city's average. For the 1784 women who saw a doctor fewer than five times during their pregnancy, the infant mortality rated was 51 percent, twice the city's average. Twenty – three percent of the mothers whose infant died has completed between nine and 11 years of school. (05/24/1982, 12:10 AM).
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