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7
persons less than 35 years of age. "Other circulatory diseases"
were responsible for 37 deaths, pneumonia for 36 deaths, and
cerebral haemorrhage for 35 deaths.
The number of deaths due to the principal zymotic diseases,
enteric fever, smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping
cough and diarrhoea (in children under 2 years) was 23. Of
this number, 12 were due to diphtheria, 2 each to measles and
whooping cough, and 7 to diarrhoea. The seven deaths of young
children due to diarrhoea or gastro-enteritis all occurred in hospitals
outside the district. Of the twelve deaths due to diphtheria,
I shall have something to say later in this report.
The Zymotic Death Rate was 0.42 per 1,000 of population, as
compared with 0.28 for the previous year.
INFANTILE MORTALITY.
The number of deaths occurring in children under 12 months
of age was 38 and the Infantile Mortality Rate 54 per 1,000 live
births. This compares unfavourably with the rate for the previous
year which was 47 and even more so with that for 1934 which was
37. The principal cause of the increased infantile mortality both
in 1935 and 1936 has been the unduly large number of deaths
caused by gastro-enteritis.
The individual causes of the infantile deaths and the age at
which death took place are shown in Table V. It will be seen that
of the 38 infantile deaths, 9 occurred in the first week of life and
18 in the first four weeks. The cihief causes of death were bronchopneumonia
which was responsible for 7 deaths, gastro-enteritis for
6 and haemorrhage for 6 deaths, these last deaths being practically
all the result of difficult delivery.
MATERNAL MORTALITY.
Only one death was registered as a maternal death, the cause of
death in this case being eclampsia following premature labour. As
this is a case wthere deatn would almost certainly have been