The implication was serious, for it is well known that infants weighing 2500 grams or less suffer a neonatal mortality ratethe- risk of dying in the first month of life which is more than 20 times as high as that
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of heavier infants. For example, the only set of available national data of the relation of birth weight to mortality reported a neonatal mortality rate of around 7.8 per 1000 for infants weighing more than 2500 grams at birth, and a rate of 174 per 1000 for infants of low-birth-weight.