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37
Welfare. This part being merely statistical, it is not proposed at this point to do
more than give some sort of analysis of the figures relating to deaths amongst
infants.
Causes.—A Table (Ministry of Health, Table III) will be found on page 73,
in which, in addition to the causes of death, are shown the distribution of the deaths
according to age and locality.
So far as age and causation are concerned, conditions vary little year by year.
In 1920, as in other years, the greatest number of deaths occurred in the early weeks
of life. Of the babies, 64 were less than one month old when they died and 92 less
than three months. The figures for 1919 were 58 and 91.
The outstanding causes of death and the proportions traceable to them were
those usually noted. Prematurity (numbers 12, 13 and 14 in the table), which as
usual heads the list, caused 55 in 1919 and 50 in 1920. Diarrhoea and enteritis
(7 and 8) accounted for 22 in 1919 and for 20 in 1920. Respiratory diseases, the
third of the main causes, took 25 in 1919, and in 1920, 26.
Amongst the other causes of death, those which call for mention are the
commoner infectious diseases, which together led to 4 deaths among infants. Of the
4, 2 were due to measles, 1 to diphtheria and 1 to scarlet fever. Neither in 1920
nor in 1919 were any deaths ascribed to injury at birth. Two deaths were stated to
be due to overlaying, 6 to tuberculosis, and 2 to convulsions.
In the following table information supplementary to that in the large table is
given with regard to deaths in the various sub-districts.Christ Church, which always contributes most largely to the infantile as to most
of the other mortality rates, being the most thickly populated area and that in which
there is most poverty, most overcrowding and most neglect of ordinary precautions,
is again at the head of the list with 71 deaths amongst infants.