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13
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 1938 was 48 and the
number of births in that year 802. The infantile mortality rate is therefore 60.
The number of legitimate births was 705 and the deaths amongst legitimate
infants numbered 33, giving a rate of 47. There were 97 illegitimate births and 15
deaths, the rate being 155.
In 1937 the death-rate for all infants per 1,000 live births was 73.
The means adopted in the Borough with a view to reducing this rate 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:—So far as age and causation are concerned, conditions vary little year
by year. In 1938, as in other years, the greatest number of deaths occurred in the
early weeks of life. Of the babies, 19 were less than one month old when they died
and 26 less than three months. The corresponding figures for 1937 were 31 and
40 respectively.
The outstanding causes of death were those usually noted. Prematurity, etc.
(numbers 12, 13 and 14 in the Table), headed the list with 19 deaths in 1938, as
against 24 in 1937, whilst respiratory diseases (numbers 24 and 25) accounted for
15 in 1938 and 14 in 1937. The number of deaths due to diarrhoea and enteritis
(numbers 7 and 8) was 8 in 1938, 10 being recorded in 1937.
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 probably most neglect of
ordinary hygienic precautions, is again at the head of the list with 16 deaths amongst
infants.
Table 10 on the following page shows, in addition to the causes of death, the
distribution of the deaths according to age and locality.