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8
Report of the Medical Officer of Health for 1949.
Infantile Mortality.
The number of deaths under one year was 131, the infantile
mortality rate being 26 per 1,000 births. This compares with a
rate of 31 for each of the two previous years and is the lowest rate
ever recorded.
For the ten years ending 1939 the average infantile mortality
rate was 55, whlie for the ten years ending 1949 the average rate
was 37.
Maternal Mortality.
One death occurred from accidents and diseases of pregnancy
but none from puerperal pyrexia, giving a total of one death after
childbirth. This is equivalent to a rate of .19 for 1,000 live and
still births, compared with .35 in 1948 and .29 in 1947.
Enquiries into all maternal deaths, which were commenced in
1928 at the instance of the Ministry of Health, have been continued.
Infantile and Maternal Mortality since 1900.
In Table IV on page 9 comparative statistics are given to
show the trend of infant and maternal mortality during the 49
years which have elapsed since the Borough of Wandsworth was
constituted in 1900.
The average annual rates of mortality are given for successive
periods, the six years, 1939 to 1944, being omitted as the figures
were invalidated during that period by the evacuation of mothers
and children.
In the first ten years—1901 to 1910—the mean rate of infantile
mortality was 109 per 1,000 births for each year of the decade.
In the next decade the rate fell to 85 and since then has continued
to fall until it has now been reduced to 26 per 1,000 births, the
lowest rate ever recorded. This outstanding fall in the mortality
rate reflects a large saving of infant life in the last 50 years, as
indicated in column 3 of Table IV. During the ten years 19011910
7,498 infants died in their first year of life. The corresonding
figure for the five years 1945 to 1949 was 905—equivalent to
1,810 for a ten-year period—less than a quarter of the number of
infant deaths in the earlier period.
In the same period the maternal mortality has fallen from a
mean rate of 3.2 in the first decade to .19 for the year 1949.
A study of columns 3 and 5 of Table IV will indicate the
large number of infant lives, and to a less extent of maternal lives,
which have been saved during the period covered by the Table.