VICTORY OVER DISEASE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 6

VICTORY OVER DISEASE

Returns relating to the notifiable infectious diseases in New Zealand for the year 1923, with comments made thereon by Dr. Frengley in this issue, show that steadily, but surely, victory is being won over many of the v ills to which human flesh wag supposed to be heir. No longer is this undesirable inheritance regarded as inevitable. Public hygiene, as it is now understood and given effect to in most oi the civilised countries of the world, has dealt the knock-out blow to that idea. There has been, and is being, made available a vast accumulation of experience gathered in many different countries by medical men administering, or otherwise particularly interested in, public health. This information is now placed by each at the disposal of all for the general betterment of the health of the world. Efforts to bring the death rates of countries down to the irreducible minimum are continuous, determined, and relentless. The movement may be likened -to a vast

world-war upon a common enemy: preventable disease. In that conflict New Zealand is engaged,, and, moreover, is recognised by other countries as being in the van. In the past twenty years in this Dominion the death rate per 1000 has been reduced from 10.40 to 8.77. This achievement Has emboldened an American authority on public hygiene to place New Zealand in the list of the " healthiest countries in the world" by reason of its low death rate and corresponding high expectancy of life—superior, in fact, to the tinited Kingdom, United States, France, Italy, Germany (before the war), Japan, South Africa, and Denmark. Incidentally Dr. Frengley reports most hopefully of the successful reduction in the number of deaths from puerperal] septicaemia. The notifications of i blood-poisoning during confinement in 1922 were 362, of which 52 cases were For 19231 there were but 177 cases notified, in which 39 of the patients died. Infant mortality (under twelve months) in New Zealand has been reduced from 35.29 per cent, in 1872 to 11.07 in 1922—surely a wonderful victory over infantile diseases and the wrongful upbringing of babies. Within the past few years a great preventive movement has been in progress in this Dominion that has had,' one.might say, almost sensational results in saving great numbers of babies in the most critical first year of their lives from intense suffering, and, in many cases, from death. Moreover, another result of this movement has been the education of a great host of young mothers up to fo high standard of their duty to themselves and their children. At any rate, they Have been given abundant opportunities to acquire knowledge of a. kind invaluable to the nation, no less than to themselves, and such as they may pass on to their daughters or to other potential young mothers. This highly important infant life-saving work is but one aspect of public health work in New Zealand that has attracted the attention of pubhe hygienists in other parts of the world to this country. It is generally well known to them, and i 3 being very closely watched; indeed, in some instances it is being emulated. The great fact that the public of New Zealand need to keep before them in, their individual as well as their... corporate lives is that this Dominion is taking its proper position in the worldwide efforts to prevent recurrence, of diseases that are preventable. In any case, so.much is recognised and freely acknowledged by the leading public'hygienists in the countries that count.'