SAVING INFANT LIFE.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 May 1921, Page 9

SAVING INFANT LIFE.

NEW ZEALAND’S RECORD, LOWEST known DEATH-RATJ?, The statistics of infant mortality in New Zealand during the last 50 years have been examined, by Dr. M. H. Watt, director of the division of public hygiene in the Department of Health, with a view to showing the remarkable progress that has been achieved in the last 20 years in the preservation of infant life. “The infant mortality rate, by which is meant the number of babies who die under one year of age per thousand babies born, is generally acknowledged to be the best index to the health and welfare of infants in a community, and so provides a convenient standard for comparing over a period of years the efficiency of the measures adopted in any one country for the conservation of infant life,” says Dr. Watt, in an article in the Journal of Health. “It is most satisfactory to be able to record that a survey of New Zealand vital statistics shows continuous improvement in this branch of public health, until to-day New Zealand has the lowest infantile mortality rate of all countries from which figures are available.”

The article is illustrated by a graph of the figures for quinquennial periods, the annual statistics being averaged to avoid the fluctuations due to climatic conditions and abnormal prevalence of infectious disease. Thus in the period 1872-6, the death rate was 110per. 1000; for the 1915-19 quinquennium it was 48.51, the rate for 1919 having been only 45.26. Dr. Watt observes that the decline has not been uniform, but has occurred in two phases separated by an interval corresponding to the decennium 1891-1900. The initial decline may be attributable to the increasing accuracy of birth registration, but that since 1900 may safely be regarded as real, as the statistics are known to be exact.

CAUSE OF IMPROVEMENT. In 1900 a Public Health Department was constituted, and there is little doubt that the general improvement in the Sanitary circumstances of the people of the Dominion, consequent thereupon was the cause of the rapid and continuous reduction in the rate of infant deaths in the years immediately succeeding that date.

“The efforts of the Health Department have been augmented, and the fall in the rate accelerated,” says Dr. Watt, “by the valuable aid of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of W omen and Children, which, beginning in Dunedin as quite a small organisation in 1907, has since gradually ex<tended its operations over the length and breadth of the Dominion. The years 1904, 1905 and 1907 are worthy of special mention as constituting three most important landmarks in public health administration in the Dominion—the first being the date of the coming into force of the Midwives Act, the second of the opening of the St. Helen’s Hospital at Wellington (the pioneer institution of its type), and the third of the gazetting of regulations in which for the first time was laid down a standard for milk. The influence exerted by each of these measures separately in promoting infant welfare is difficult to determine with any exactitude, but the combined influence must have been most powerful.” Dr. Watts remarks that there has been a distinct tendency, in belauding the admittedly meritorious work of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children, to ignore the achievements of the Health Department. The general improvement in infant welfare in New Zealand since 1900 anticipated the foundation of the society, and can, for the period 1900-6, be claimed as due entirely to public health administration.

THE MOST CRITICAL PERIOD. In examining the ages at which thfc greatest saving of infant life has been effected, Dr. Watt presents statistics showing that the mortality under one ■month has not been greatly reduced. “The experience of .New Zealand is much the same as that of other countries. Nowhere has either State or voluntary effort yet succeeded in improving to any appreciable extent the chances of the new-born babe of surviving its first month. Developmental diseases exact their toll mainly during the first month, some 70 to 80 per cent, of the total deaths of infants attributable to these causes occurring at this age. The influences adverse to life must, in this case, be regarded as prenatal, and the only way to effect any improvement would seem to be by paving more attention to the health ,of the expectant mother, and generally by ensuring the healthiness of the stock from which the race is recruited.

“It is not to be expected that the improvement manifested in the age group one to twelve months can continue indefinitely, and if further progress is to be made efforts should be directed toward conserving the life of infants under one month.”