SAVING THE BABIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 31 July 1929, Page 5

SAVING THE BABIES

INCIDENCE OF MORTALITY LOW IN NEW ZEALAND BIG INTEREST IN; AUSTRALIA Year in and year out Sir Truby King pursues the same mission—the promotion of the health of women and children. He returned by the Aorangi from Sydney this Jweek' after spending ja month in the Commonwealth. This problem, h c said, is very prominent in Australia, and it is felt that maternal and infant mortality should be much lowei than it is. "This point," said Sir Truby to> the "Star," "has boon strongly emphasised by Dr. Purely, lor many years Chiel Health Oilicer for Auckland, and now occupying the same position in Sydney. Speaking last week at the opening <jl the New Zealand Club in Sydney, he mentioned that infantile statistics were so good in Sydney some twenty years ago—when he first went there—that Dr. Mason, then Chief Health Officer for New Zealand, sent Dr. Angus Bennett from Wellington to Sydney with a viewto ascertaining how the rate of infantile mortality—particularly in regard tc infantile diarrhoea —could be reduced in .New Zealand.

The position is quite different now. The total infantile mortality in New Zealand is only about two-thirds that of the Australian rate, and the mortality from infantile diarrhoea is less than a quarter. Prior tu the'formation of the J'lunket Society, New Zealand sometimes lost between 500 and 600 children from infantile diarrhoea in a single year. Last year the rate was under fifty, and it is many years since the Dominion lost 100 children in any year from this cause. For three successive years not a .single death'vat recorded in Duricdiu up to two years of ago from this great scourge of infancy, and there have only been two or three such deaths in the course of tin last five years in Dunedin, where the first Karitane Hospital was established 'twenty-two Years ago. "Most striking Xew Zealand figure; are shown in the great reduction in infantile mortality, which has taken place from the time that the mother may be said to take over her baby and look after the child herself. Twenty-twc years ago mothers lost five babies it every hundred. Now they lose only onf baby in every hundred in New Zealand --to bo strictly accurate they lost one and one-tenth last year. In England the rate is still five per cent."