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Anorak News | Scare Story Of The Day: 300% Rise In Dead Babies On Sunday Night

Scare Story Of The Day: 300% Rise In Dead Babies On Sunday Night

by | 29th, July 2010

THE Daily Mail’s Sophie Borland lends her name to an article headlined: “Babies born at night three times more at risk of death.”

Ladies – you need to cross your legs at night. All night. And there is scarier news:

Babies who are born at night or at weekends when there are hospital staffing shortages are at higher risk of dying.

Sunday night is not the time to give birth. Well, so the news tells us. Get a lod of the facts:

Women who give birth at night or weekends face a higher risk of their baby dying due to hospital staffing shortages, research suggests.

Risk? Suggests? The facts are getting less factual:

Figures show that babies delivered in the evenings or weekends are a third more likely to die than those born between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.

Hold on a moment. The headline screamed:

“Babies born at night three times more at risk of death.”

Is a third the same as times three? Is 33.3 % (recurring) the same as 300%?

By now you want some facts:

In a study of a million births between 1985 and 2004, researchers at the University of Cambridge found the death rate for babies born in the working week was 4.2 per 10,000 deliveries, compared to 5.6 for other times.

Such are the facts in the Daily Mail scare story…



Posted: 29th, July 2010 | In: Reviews Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink