The Wicker Basket Baby - Infant Mortality

On November 30th, 1933, just as the owner of a gas station and grocery store was closing up, he was robbed at gun point, by a young couple who had no Bonnie and Clyde talents. The bungling young man's disguise couldn't conceal the fact that the victim knew him. Nor, did the hat that the woman in the get-away car wore, camouflage her distinctive looks.

The gas station was remote and it was too late and too far to go for the sheriff. The victim and his wife decided to wait until the next day, for the long desert drive to file a robbery report. Justice could easily wait until morning, they knew all too well, where the perpetrators lived and worked.

Meanwhile, the robbers silently congratulated themselves that their feminine innocent accomplices slept through the gas station robbery, in the backseat of a secretly borrowed 1922 closed coach Essex. They'd gotten enough money, but they were still worried, as they grimly drove away.

Little did they know, that by 9:30 a.m. the next morning, the youngest of them would be dead. The older girl would be haunted by the events for the rest of her life. In the end, all that happened would have life-long consequences.

Ten days earlier, in what seemed like an ordinary cold, little Wanda Mae began to become more fussy and kept rubbing her ear. Her young mother, by then the mother of two girls only eleven months apart, didn't realize at first how serious her baby's ear infection was. Her older daughter had already experienced the same symptoms twice before, and recovered each time in a few days.

For the first couple of days, she tried various home remedies of the era, for inner ear infections, including blowing smoke in her little girl's ear. Two days later, frantic and exhausted with a constantly crying baby, she spent the last of their grocery money to take her little girl to the local doctor. He prescribed Vitamin C and told the mother to "let the illness run it's course."

Soon, Wanda Mae developed other symptoms, such as:

• Cough
• Clammy skin
• A very high fever
• She wouldn't eat
• She seemed to be struggling to breathe

They kept taking her back to the doctor, borrowing his fee each time from friends and relatives, who had little to give financially themselves. By the day before she died, the doctor admitted he could do little for her, and suggested that she be taken to the local hospital in another nearby town.

That winter day, the hospital was already fairly full. Many, if not most of the patients, in this time before health insurance -- were indigent. Wanda Mae's parents were were told to find someone that they could borrow a down payment for hospitalization from, and to hurry back.

Everyone they knew contributed what they could, but the money combined only amounted to a few dollars. Time was running out. Frantic, the young father decided he had no choice, but to get the money any way he could -- after being turned down for a loan by his employer, a church, and his banker.

Four days before her first birthday, and twenty-six days before America's first insured "Blue Cross Baby" was born, a baby girl died in Chandler, Arizona. While the financial repercussions of the stock market crash of 1929 weren't a direct cause of her death -- the financial hard times everyone experienced, played a role in this infant's tragic death from otitis media and lobar pneumonia.

She was the littlest accomplice (along with her twenty-two month old sister) who rode in a wicker basket, while her young parents robbed a gas station -- because the local doctor who had been treating their baby for an ear infection, would not be able to admit the baby to the hospital, without a down payment.

On their way to report the gas station robbery, the business owning couple stopped to chat with an acquaintance, who informed them of the tragic loss of a young couple's eleven month old child.

They found the news so distressing, that they ended up staying in town for the next couple of days. They never got around to reporting the robbery.

Heartbroken for the family, the couple anonymously paid the entire $48.54 complete funeral costs for little Wanda Mae, before she was buried in the Double Butte Cemetery. Family members didn't know who paid the funeral costs for years.

Twenty years later, the husband would admit to the then local sheriff -- that he recognized him and his wife, the night they robbed his gas station. He'd even seen the innocent accomplices in the back of the 1922 Essex. Both victim and robber hugged each other and cried the day he revealed that secret.

The gas station owner told him, under the circumstances, he would have done the same to try to save his own child. This was the reason they never turned him in. Then, the two (now old friends) agreed over a beer, that if one is going to plan an armed robbery -- don't borrow your brother's Essex, when it's the only one in the territory.

What the gas station owner never did admit while my grandfather was alive -- was the exceptional charity he and his wife gave the day -- they borrowed against their property for collateral, to pay for the baby in the wicker basket's funeral.

America's first "Blue Cross Baby" came into this world on December 27, 1933 in Durham, North Carolina -- making her the first baby to have her birth and health care covered by insurance. Not only was her birth covered by a family health insurance certificate -- it also included maternity benefits. The total cost for a ten day stay in the hospital came to sixty dollars.

At this Depression era time, that low hospital figure, was quite impressive, as the average worker (if they had work) made only $780.00 a year. However, most people would be shocked to know the facts about the cost of delivering a baby -- now seventy-five years later.

Here are some numbers to ponder:

• Today, the costs to deliver a baby, without any complications ranges from $9,000 to $17,000 for those who are uninsured.
• A C-section, without any complications ranges from $14,000 to $25,000 for that same uninsured patient.
• Yet, for those lucky enough to have insurance, the costs to deliver a baby, without any complications generally costs their parents from $500 to $3,000 out-of-pocket.

Virtually no one in the early 1930s had what we would consider health insurance today, especially coverage for children. One statistic from the time period, suggests that less than fifteen percent of U.S. families shouldered the cost of more than fifty percent, of all yearly medical expenses.

Those who could not pay, if they could get care, had to turn to either family, friends, churches, or private charities. Many medical practitioners of the time, ended up absorbing the costs of a majority of patients who could not pay.

Before health insurance was common place, people paid out-of-pocket. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt, the problem of uninsured families was so severe that several attempts were made to make health insurance compulsory. However, during The Great Depression -- with millions of people unemployed -- unemployment insurance and other needs were greater. As we all know, no one could ever come up with a plan for national health insurance that would work.

Unlike today, in 1933, pneumonia was the leading cause of death in the U.S. However, just like in the 1930s, pneumonia is still the leading cause of death in children throughout the rest of the world. Thanks to the creation of antibiotics like penicillin, these are preventable deaths.

Now, pneumonia is a very treatable public health issue, that can manifest itself in over one hundred different types. However, the five most common types are:

• Bacterial pneumonia - Usually easily controlled by antibiotics
• Viral pneumonia - Most common in children
• Mycoplasma pneumonia - Milder form of primarily fungi infections (also known as "walking pneumonia")
• Opportunistic pneumonia - Usually strikes those with weakened immune systems and the elderly
• Respiratory syncytical pneumonia virus (RSV) - The most prevalent kind of pneumonia in infants and toddlers

Of the three ways to prevent pneumonia, the first one has to do with common sense -- if you make it your business to life a lifestyle of eating right (plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables), exercise, and getting enough rest -- you'll be more likely to have a healthy immune system.

Secondly, if you are in a high risk health situation (over the age of 65 or have an underlying illness) get vaccinated for the two most common types (influenza virus and pneumococcus). There's even a new vaccine for children.

Third, always make sure that if your child has any cough that's not getting better in a couple of days, coughing up blood, or strange colored and bad smelling sputum -- seek medical attention immediately. The video link below, while technical, is a very good overview of pneumonia as it is viewed by the medical profession today.

Otitis Media is not normally the name of a common illness that most parents are familiar with. Otitis Media is simply the medical name for inflammation of the middle ear, and a complication of a type of upper respiratory tract infections.

It is the most common illness in infants and small children. Commonly, infants and particularly toddlers get at least two to three middle ear infections every year.

Now, one of the frightening things about otitis media, is the evolving emergence of antibiotic resistance, that has this illness once again morphing into a life-threatening illness.