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5
including health education and the discovery of the chemotherapeutic
drugs as well as penicillin and the other antibiotics
which have greatly simplified the control of the
childhood infections.
The maternal mortality rate (the number of deaths of
mothers in childbirth per 1,000 total births) had shown a
similar decline. The rate in 1921 was 4.0 per 1,000 live and
still births and in 1944 the rate was 2.2 per thousand. It is
pleasant to record that there have been no maternal deaths
due to childbirth, in the Borough, for the past five years,
This improvement can be related to improved obstetric
services, better housing conditions and, again, better chemical
and antibiotic control of the puerperal infections.
The birth rate in 1946 was 22.30 per 1,000 of the population
(19.13 and 24.3 in the previous two years) and fell
steadily until about 1955 when an upward trend became
noticeable. The rate for 1963 was 17.91 compared with 13.51
per 1,000 in 1954. The Department for Education and Sciences
publication "Statistics of Education", 1963 (H.M.S.O.) show
that the post-war "bulge" now passing out of the secondary
schools is but the forerunner of bigger bulges to come which
are bound to have important social, industrial and educational
implications for the future.
The death rate, on the other hand, has remained almost
unchanged over the past 18 years and more. The fall in the
death rate in the country as a whole began around 1875
and was due to improvements in the adverse environmental
conditions which the process of urbanisation had brought
to bear on the community— not merely in regard to sanitation
but housing, overcrowding, nutrition, hours of work and
factory conditions. The tuberculosis death rate also began to
fall about the same time and has continued unabated
jo the present day. Improved standards of living and medical
discoveries have combined to bring this about and to raise
the general expectation of life of the population.
Why then has the death rate not continued to fall ? The
answer is twofold. Firstly with an ageing population more
People may be expected to die for there is a limit to which
life can be prolonged and, secondly, deaths from certain
causes have increased over the past quarter of a century,
notably, cancer of the lung, cardio-vascular disease, including
coronary disease and accidents both on the roads and in
the home. The causes of these epidemics, for this is what
they really are, are so complex and interwoven in the fabric
of our Society that there can be no easy way to their