View report page

17
MORTALITY AT DIFFERENT AGES.
Infantile Mortality,
Of the 2,228 deaths 517 or 23.2 per cent. were of
infants under one year of age, and the rate of infant
mortality measured by the proportion of deaths under
one year to registered births was 125 per 1,000. This
compares unfavourably with the figures of the last four
years, but the marked decline shown in them was
unquestionably in part due to the prevailing cold
summers, and, as was remarked in my last report, no
definite conclusion could be drawn as to what extent
infantile mortality had been influenced by the efforts made
of recent years to reduce it, until we had experienced
some hot and dry summers.
Last year was remarkable for its high summer temperature
which was, as in previous years, accompanied by
an excessive mortality from summer diarrhœa, to which
the rise in the death-rate was due, there being 44 deaths
per 1,000 births from diarrhœa and enteritis in 1911,
compared with 16 per 1,000 in 1910, and an average of
29 per 1,000 in the four years 1907-10.
High as this mortality is, it was exceeded of late
years in both 1904 and 1906, and if the diagram showing
the infantile mortality from all causes in Fulham since
1886 be referred to, it will seem that, notwithstanding
the unfavourable season, there was a marked decline in
1911 compared with the rates prevailing between 1886
and 1906, which may in a large part be fairly attributed
to the work which has been directed to the removal of
conditions detrimental to infant life.