SEBRING — In Highlands County, six infants died in 2004, seven in 2005, and 11 in 2006. Those don't seem like high numbers, considering that 1,004 babies are born here every year. But take a second look: the number of infant deaths has almost doubled in two years, and Mary Jo Plews is troubled. Plews, executive director of Healthy Start Coalition of Hardee, Highlands and Polk counties, said a committee is still looking at individual cases in Highlands County to determine why the infant mortality rate went up so drastically. One reason, she realized, is that Highlands is a small county, so the statistics themselves are small. For instance, Lafayette County had only three infant deaths from 2004-06, but since there were only 295 live births in the same three years, the mortality rate was 11.7 percent, one of the highest in the state. ...more

October 26, 2007