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15
Enquiries are made into all stillbirths notified and
occurring in the district, and these help to bring forward
in some cases the cause, or neglect, of the principle of
prevention. In one case the neglect was wilful, the
mother refusing treatment and the stillbirth resulting
from toxaemia of neglected albuminuria in the mother.
The outstanding factor in nine of the cases was the
neglect of the mother to seek ante-natal advice. In one
case neither doctor, nor midwife, was engaged, the confinement
taking place in emergency.
All this means that more than 50 per cent. of stillbirths
are preventable. There is, too, the desire todestroy
the foetus in utero, or bring forward a miscarriage—a
practice which is unhappily encouraged by
quack medicine advertisements, which shelter their
action by a wilful misinterpretation of birth control.
Deaths.
Five hundred and four deaths were registered
during the year, and is the nett figure furnished by
the Registrar General after due allowance has been
made for inward and outward transfers. This figure
is seven in excess of the figure for 1931 and gives a
crude Death Rate of 10.7 per 1,000 of the estimated
population.