View report page

DEATHS.
The death rate is not a truly reliable index of the healthiness of
a district because it is seriously affected by the age grouping of the
population, although when the comparability factor is applied this
discrepancy is reduced to a minimum. The death rate in Wembley
during the last twenty-one years has not changed so materially. It
was, in the early years, somewhere around 9 per thousand, and even
at the end of the period a variation of between 9 per thousand and
10 per thousand was not unusual.
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
This figure, which is obtained by equating the number of infants
dying under one year of age per thousand live births, is always
regarded as being a sound and reliable index of the healthy conditions
in a district and a figure by which the quality of the health services
and the wellbeing of the population can be judged.
In 1937 the infantile mortality in Wembley was 43.62 and it is
satisfactory to record that there has been a more or less continuous
fall in this figure, which in 1956 reached the very low level of 16.76
per thousand and in 1958 was 19.1 per thousand live births. There
can be no question that the children to-day are better endowed and
have a substantially improved chance of living to the age of one year
and therefore successfully passing through a phase of development
which is hazardous, than had a child born even twenty-one years ago.
This improvement is due in part only to the services provided, but
to a material extent also to the improved standard of living in the
community.
MATERNAL MORTALITY.
The number of deaths of women in childbirth during each year
reaches such a low figure that to draw any conclusions from the
statistics prepared in any one particular year would probably be
misleading. The rate, however, of the last twenty-one years has
shown some tendency to fall, apart from the years during the War
when there was a substantial increase. The figure has fallen in
recent years to a very low level and quite frequently years have been
experienced in which there has been no puerperal death of a Wembley
resident.
53