matthew 27: 7, so after consultation they bought with the pieces of silver the potter's field in which to bury strangers. in a scene from what, you would think, is a third world country these are pictures of infant's coffins. this however isn't a third world country it's memphis, tennessee. the local paper highlights this tragedy in an article aptly titled "Memphis ranks worst in the nation for woeful rate of infant deaths." excerpts look like:
The babies are buried with a backhoe, as many as eight at a time, in homemade pine boxes...
Here at the Shelby County Public Cemetery, just outside the view of Memphis's gleaming symbol of prosperity, Wolfchase Galleria, this 30-acre burial ground for the poor holds 14,000 bodies -- most of them infants in graves marked only by numbers...
An infant dies in Shelby County every 43 hours...
Several Memphis ZIP codes have infant death rates higher than scores of Third World countries. North Memphis' 38108, which includes the tattered communities of Douglass and Hollywood, is deadlier for babies than Vietnam, El Salvador and Iran...
Hundreds of Shelby County women get no prenatal checkups, showing up in labor at The Med's emergency room... They arrive with seemingly insurmountable problems, some no bigger than a can of Coke.
memphis is a place of "haves" and have-nots." in a conversation with a resident over their new nba (national basketball assoc) team, he said "in order to build an arena that was demographically correct, there would be one side with all skyboxes and the other side would be grassy general admission." you read this article and wonder how a place which has an icon in st. jude's children hospital does not have adequate education for its community. the "have not's" are poverty, and infant mortality is a symptom of poverty within an area; caused by lack of access to healthcare, prenatal care, proper nutrition, & education.
i wonder what it takes to address a preventable tragedy like this? are these just the forgotten people and the forgettable children? globally speaking, this just one place with problems of infant mortality, but you would think in a place with as much power, technological advances, philanthropic efforts, and so many government programs that you get dizzy, we'd have something to save children & educate all parents. did you know, placing children on their backs to sleep is the best prevention for sids (sudden infant death syndrome)? the statistic escapes me at the moment, but there is signifant research to indicate it only takes placing a child on their back when they go to sleep. plus, the at risk community is the african american community for sids, yet, all they need to know is this one piece of knowledge.
should the church be seeking to take care of the children? is it the governments responsibility? is it our responsibility? poverty is an issue that many talk about, but what gets done? who are the people to talk too? i am sure i don't know them, but they are out there. it doesn't seem that the public servants of memphis look out for the "have-nots" if you read the article. i suppose from this post my intent is to raise some awareness to something i think should be newsworthy. however the "strangers," the forgotten and forgettable, get not pub, they just get buried in the "potters field" in my backyard.
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