Infant mortality in the Baltic sates had always been lower than in the rest of the Czarist Russia or in the USSR. By 1988-1989 infant mortality rate according to the Soviet definition had fallen to 11 per 1000, and the value was close to the level in many developed countries. In the 1990s the rate has increased considerably, reaching 15.2 in 1997. However, by the end of the 1990s it declined again reaching 11.4 in 1999 and 10.4 in 2000.