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44
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The infantile mortality rate of any district is the number of deaths of infants
under one year of age per 1,000 of the births which occurred in the same year. The
number of babies under one year who died in St. Marylebone in 1923 was 111, and
the number of births in that year 1,668. The infantile mortality rate is therefore 66'0,
two points under that for 1922 (68 per 1,000).
The course which the rate has taken is graphically shown in the chart on
page 46, which indicates clearly that the only really serious interruption to the
decline was in 1917.
The means adopted in the Borough with a view to bringing about a reduction
in infantile mortality and generally improving the life and health chances of infants
and children are described in a separate section of this report—Maternity and Child
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 I) will be found on page 45,
in which, in addition to the causes of death, is 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 1923, as in other years, the greatest number of deaths occurred in the early weeks
of life. Of the babies, 50 were less than one month old when they died and 72 less
than three months. The figures for 1922 were 39 and 63.
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 43 deaths, a figure higher by 4 than that for the year
1922. Diarrhoea and enteritis (7 and 8) accounted for 15 in 1922 and for 13 in
1923. Respiratory diseases, the third of the main causes, took 19 in 1922, and in
1923, also 19.
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The commoner infectious diseases together led to only 1 death among infants,
the child in this case dying of diphtheria. Three deaths were stated to be due to
overlaying, 3 to tuberculosis, and 4 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.