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GREENSBORO — North Carolina's infant mortality rate fell to a record low in 2006, but the rate for Guilford County rose from the year before, the state announced Wednesday.

The statewide rate was 8.1 per 1,000 live births, down from 8.8 percent in 2004 and 2005, the state said.

But that rate leaves North Carolina ranked among the nation's worst in terms of infant mortality, according to the United Health Foundation, which ranks North Carolina behind only South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi based on 2004-05 data, the state said. The state did not provide 2006 data for other states.

In the region, Guilford and every other county but Alamance saw an increase in the mortality rate from 2005 to 2006.

In Guilford, the number of infants who died increased from 57 in 2005 to 65 in 2006, primarily because of premature and multiple births, said Charmaine Purdum, coordinator of the Guilford County Coalition on Infant Mortality.

Multiple births tend to lead to premature births, low birth weights and complications, all of which are associated with greater infant mortality, Purdum said. Some babies are born after as little as 24 weeks; a normal pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

Many of today's prematurely born infants would never have lived to birth years ago and thus would not have been counted in infant-mortality records.

Guilford's deaths in 2006 were associated with six sets of twins, two sets of triplets and two sets of quadruplets, Purdum said, with just 10 pregnancies resulting in 20 infant deaths.

Purdum speculated that if multiple gestations such as twins are becoming more common, it might be because older women need medical help to conceive and that such procedures often result in multiple gestations.

Infant mortality remains a serious issue despite the coalition's years of work, Purdum said.

"You could take a bus full of 50 children out on the highway, and it could crash, and all 50 are killed, and you'd know about that," she said. "Yet we can lose 65 babies in Guilford County, most of whom don't have a face or a name except for families who are affected by the loss."

Women can do a number of things to increase their chances of having a healthy baby, starting with being healthy themselves, Purdum said.

The most important factor is getting prenatal care as early in the pregnancy as possible, and women also should avoid alcohol, smoking and secondhand smoke, obesity and stress, Purdum said.

Because of the number of public and private programs providing prenatal care, often at very low cost, "finance is not a barrier in Guilford County for getting prenatal care," Purdum said.

Statewide and in Guilford County, a disparity remains between infant mortality rates of white babies and babies of minority racial or ethnic groups, Purdum said, and the reasons tend to be that minority women are more likely to be exposed to one or more risk factors than are white women.

Those factors don't change, so the coalition's messages must be repeated "year after year," Purdum said, adding, "We have to get the message out to a new generation of women."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.