London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Leyton 1918
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Leyton]
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6
INFANT WELFARE AND ANTE-NATAL WORK.
This, the third anniversary of the inauguration of Baby
Week, affords a good opportunity to review the history and
present position of the campaign in Leyton directed to the
preservation of infant life. Most of the facts herein set out are
well known to many of you, but as each year happily brings us
into contact with fresh people interested in the work, I have
thought it desirable to repeat them.
The great necessity for diminishing the number of deaths
among infants and young children is due of course to the serious
diminution in the number of infants born.
To make this quite clear the following are a few figures affecting the area presided over by the Leyton Urban District Council:—
| In 1913 the births numbered | 2,904 |
| „ 1914 „ „ | 2,800 |
| ,, 1915 ,, ,, | 2,655 |
| ,, 1916 ,, ,, | 2,560 |
| ,, 1917 ,, ,, | 1,920 |
| ,, 1918 ,, ,, | 1,791 |
So that it will be seen that in five years the number of births
diminished from 2,904 to 1,791, a difference of 1,113.
For many years it had been recorded in the reports of
Medical Officers of Health and others whose duty it is to compile
health statistics, that the death-rate among infants under
one year of age was greatly out of proportion to deaths at other
ages. The great improvements in sanitation generally have
shown their effects on infant mortality, but in spite of these the
infantile mortality rate, which expression is used to indicate the
number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000
births, is capable of further considerable reduction. Thus in
Leyton our infantile mortality rate averages about 80. I should
like to see it reduced to 50. In some towns in England and
Wales this rate is 150 and over.