Perinatal and neonatal mortality are increasingly important public health issues in many developing countries, as postneonatal mortality rates fall (1). In Bangladesh, for example, the infant mortality rate appears to have fallen this century from over 200 deaths per thousand live births to approximately 80 deaths per thousand live births (2–4). By contrast, neonatal deaths now account for about two-thirds of the 8 million infant deaths that occur globally each year (5), and the neonatal mortality rate (NMR) in Bangladesh was recently estimated to be 65 deaths