View report page

166
The following table is intended to show the deaths of babies
who at one time or another during their first year attended a Clinic,
as compared with deaths among those who never attended. If a
baby only attended once it is included in the Clinic returns:—

2,692 babies under one year of age attended the Clinics for
the first time during 1938. Within the same period 3,335 babies
were born and 135 died; 38 of these latter are not included in the
above table, as information concerning them was not obtainable.
Although the clinic attendance figures and the births and deaths
figures do not cover precisely the same periods, the attendances of
new cases at the clinics do not fluctuate so greatly as to cause
serious error. Of the 97 babies tabulated who died, 31 had
attended a clinic in Croydon and 66 had not attended, i.e., 32 per
cent. of the deaths were in clinic babies and 68 per cent. in nonclinic
babies. Of the 3,335 babies born, approximately 2,692
attended on calculation based on past attendances. The infantile
mortality, estimated on this basis is only 12 per 1,000 births for
the clinic babies, and 103 per 1,000 births for non-clinic babies.
The following table is interesting, especially when the figures
for under 1 year are contrasted with those for over 1 year.
Approximately 83 per cent. of the former group of babies were
found healthy on their first visit and were presumably brought
because their mothers desired expert opinion and advice quite
apart from treatment; in the latter group, 71 per cent. were found
healthy on the first visit, which may be interpreted to mean that
when a mother first attends a clinic with a child over a year old
she does so because of some difficulty in management; 65 per cent.
of babies under 1 year were being breast fed at their first visit,
this figure being less than 1937 (66); 57.6 per cent. of the ailing
babies were suffering from digestive trouble, 11.2 per cent. from
respiratory trouble, and 5.5 per cent. from rickets.