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VIOLENCE.
Violence, including suicide, accounted for nearly 6.0 per cent of
the total deaths, or in other words nearly as many deaths as there were
from all the notifiable diseases including Tuberculosis.
In 1935 there were 13 deaths from violence other than suicide,
this being 2 less than in 1934, which saw the highest number of deaths
from this cause that had been experienced since the formation of the
District. Of these 13 deaths, 8 were from road accidents in which
mechanically propelled vehicles were involved (2 less than in 1934),
5 were due to falls, mostly in elderly persons, 2 were post operative, and
2 were from suffocation in babies, which are specially to be regretted.
On the other hand, deaths from suicide increased in number, there
being 9 as compared with 6 in 1934 and 3 in 1933. The death rate from
this cause was thus 18 per 100,000 of population as compared with an
average of 11 and 12 in the two preceding decades. Two of the deaths
were in females under 30 years of age, the remaining 7 being in males
of ages from 27 to 81. In 3 cases coal gas poisoning, in 3 lysol poisoning,
in 2 strangulation, and in the remaining case drowning was the immediate
cause of death.
MATERNAL MORTALITY.
Only one death occurred following childbirth during 1935, the
Maternal Mortality Rate being 1.61 per thousand total births, as compared
with 4.10 in England and Wales.
The local Maternal Mortality Rate has not varied greatly during
the past 20 years, the average rate per thousand live births for the 4
five-yearly periods 1915—1934 being 3.20, 2.08, 2.66 and 3.21 The
tendency in the Country has been for this number to increase, although
a reduction in the Rate has occurred this year.
The death which occurred locally was classified as a maternal
death which should be preventable.
Attendance at the Ante-natal Clinic had been made on one occasion,
but the advice then given, and also subsequently by a general practitioner,
was not accepted, hence responsibility for the fatal termination,
at least in part, rested on the patient. A flaw in the local Maternity
Service detected as a result of the enquiry made by the Medical Officer
of Health subsequent to the occurrence of death has since been removed.
While undue alarm on the part of expectant mothers is undesirable
and largely unjustifiable, the need remains for their co-operation in
securing adequate ante-natal supervision, and treatment at the time of
childbirth if the event is to be the natural phase in life which it should
be, and fundamentally is.
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