WASTE OF CHILD LIFE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4570, 30 May 1923, Page 1

WASTE OF CHILD LIFE.

INTERESTING FIGURES. The American press is much exercised over the heavy death rate among children in that enlightened country. Statistics show that in the United States out. of every thousand children born eighty-seven die soon after birth. The Children’s Bureau of Washington publishes an elaborate report showing the infant, death rate of every country, which makes most interesting reading,, and proves that in this respect New Zealand leads the world. According to this report Chili has a black prominence in the death rate of its children. About every third baby born under its skies dies during the first twelve months. Germany, where the art of household life is supposed to have reached its highest point, has a bad record, the death rate of its infants being 145 out of every 1000, and, measured by the New Zealand death rate,, this means that every tenth baby born in Germany needlessly dies in the first twelve months of its existence. The death rate of little children in Scotland is 102 per 1000, and this means that 57 little Scotch babies out of every. 1000 born died in their first year when they might, have lived. In England 89 babies out of every 1000 die in their first year, and a comparison with the figures of New Zealand proves that 45 out of the 89 need not have died. Australia conies off well in this comparison. Only 69 out of its 1000 babies dies, but this is 24 more than die in New Zealand. An American paper frankly admits that the skill and success with which New Zealand is abridging the causes that kill babies is perhaps the greatest lesson which this little Dominion can teach the world at the present time. “Is there something,” it asks, “about the atmosphere of New Zealand* its location in the sea, the elevation of its lands, its equable climate, that makes this country especially tender in its treatment of babies ?” This certainly is not the case; the child death rate of New Zealand only a few years ago was not low, but high. “Life recently declared that New Zealand owes its success in guarding baby life to its Plunket nurses, who take their names from Lady Plunket, the wife of a former Governor, who founded the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children, and whose ministrations reach one-fourth of all the babies born in New Zealand. Their business is to circulate among the mothers of newly-born children, giving them, free of charge, the benefit of professional training.