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in older babies. The dramatic fall in the rate in the present century was
mostly in the deaths which previously occurred in infants who had
survived one month.
Because the deaths of infants under one month of age were largely
due to factors so very different from those causing the deaths of those
who survived one month but failed to survive the year, they have been
classed separately as neo-natal deaths. So very many of these are due
to many of the factors which have in others resulted in stillbirths, it being
sometimes almost a matter of chance of whether the record was a stillbirth
or a neo-natal death, that some favour the grouping of the stillbirths
and of the infant deaths occurring in the first week of life as the
peri-natal mortality, in which case the deaths in the last three weeks of
the first month should more correctly be classed with the deaths occurring
during the rest of the year. As a contrast to the very marked decline
in the number of infant deaths in the rest of the year apart from the first
week, there has been very little fall in these peri-natal deaths in recent
years.
The infant mortality rate for the country as a whole was about 150
in the early years of the century. Last year the figure was a record low
one of 25.5. The local rates have for many years been very satisfactory.
The figure has not been over 25 since 1948.
Last year 46 infants died under one year of age. In the same year
2,747 infants were born. The infant mortality rate was therefore 16.7.
Of these 46 deaths, 31 occurred in infants under one month old.
The neo-natal rate was therefore 11.3, comprising 67 per cent. of the
infant mortality rate. The mothers of only three of these infants had
been confined in their own homes, all the others being delivered in
hospitals. Of the hospital cases, deaths were due to birth injury in 8,
to prematurity in 11, to asphyxia in 3, atelectasis 1, congenital defect 4
and broncho-pneumonia 2. The deaths of those who died at home were
due one each to prematurity, congenital defects and enteritis.
Although five of the 15 deaths of those who survived one month but
failed to survive twelve months were due to developmental abnormalities,
the increasing extent to which environmental factors play their part in
causing fatalities is shown by the fact that broncho-pneumonia, enteritis
and other infections caused six deaths. Accidents caused two deaths.
Stillbirths
A stillbirth is a birth of a dead foetus at a period when it has become
viable, a time usually accepted as the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy.
Although it is known that certain illnesses of the mother might result in
the death of the foetus, in so very many cases nothing is known of why
the foetus has failed to survive. Many deaths occur when the foetus was
alive at the time the mother went into labour. In numbers of these,
the same cause might result in some cases in a stillbirth because the
foetus did not survive birth, in others in an infant death because although
the infant was alive at the time of birth it failed to survive.
56 stillbirths were registered last year. This was a rate per thousand
population of 0.26 and a rate per thousand live and stillbirths of 20.0.
The rate per 1,000 births for the country as a whole was 24.0.
B