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29
The means adopted in the Borough with a view to bringing about a reduction
and generally improving the life and health chances of infants and children are
described in a separate section of the 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 A.) will be found on page 30,
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 1934, as in other years, the greatest number of deaths occurred in the early
weeks of life. Of the babies, 18 were less than one month old when they died and
28 less than three months. The corresponding figures for 1933 were 20 and 28
respectively.
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 13 in 1933, and 15 in 1934. Diarrhoea and enteritis
(7 and 8) accounted for 14 in both 1933 and 1934. Respiratory diseases took 9 in
1933 and 7 in 1934.
Amongst the other causes of death, mention may be made of whooping cough,
measles and injury at birth which accounted for 2, 2 and 5 respectively. Again
this year, " overlaying " does not appear on the list of death-causes.
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 24 deaths amongst infants. In
1 933 the figure was 20.