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rate achieved prior to the 1950 rate was 19.03 per
thousand live births during 1948 so that there has been
a progressive fall which may be thought to be an
encouraging feature of the statistics. Of the 17 infantile
deaths which occurred there were 3 deaths from pneumonia
and 1 from tuberculous meningitis, all of which are
"prima facie" preventable, and the other deaths were
due to prematurity and congenital malformation over
which there is not, at the present time, any important
degree of control. Prophecy in this matter is perhaps
unwise, but who would be rash enough to say that we
have now reached the irreducible minimum in regard to
infant mortality? It would now seem that a rate of 10
per thousand may not be a Utopian idea but a practical
possibility. The reduction in infant mortality, it must
be remembered, is due "inter alia", to the fall in the
birth rate as well as to improved conditions of life and
health services but, even so, we are reaping the benefit
of 40 years of welfare services and of continuous health
education in infant welfare clinics and in the homes of
the children. In this way the preventive services, when
their results are reviewed over a period, afford some
compensation to workers in the health field who may
feel that their day to day work is unspectacular when
compared with the curative services.
There was one death resulting from childbirth,
giving a maternal mortality rate of 0.84 per thousand
live and stillbirths compared with 0.78 in 1949 and nil
in 1948.
The incidence of infectious disease was once again
extremely low during 1950. No case of diphtheria was
notified as compared with 1 during 1949. It would be
safe to say that the three most important infectious
diseases, apart from tuberculosis, which have now to be
taken into account are measles (304 cases), whooping
cough (281 cases) and acute anterior poliomyelitis, or
infantile paralysis (19 cases), which gives a good indication
of the changes which have been brought about by
improvements in environmental health during the past
75 years. Apart from sporadic cases and the small and
controlled epidemic, gone, for all practical purposes, are
such diseases as smallpox, typhoid fever, malignant
scarlet fever, haemorrhagic diphtheria and cerebro-spinal
fever, to name only the most important.
With regard to poliomyelitis, it was found, during
the year, as the result of an investigation carried out at
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