CARE OF BABIES

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 170, 14 April 1932, Page 6

CARE OF BABIES

Fall in Mortality RATE OF ONE PER CENT. Sir Truby’s Forecast The. rate of infantile mortality in New Zealand, which stands now at about 33 per thousand births, or 3.3 per cent., will In five years have fallen to 2.3 per cent., in ten years to 1.3 per cent., and in fifteen years to 1 per cent. This is the forecast made by Sir Truby King in an announcement published in this issue. The prospect held out is that 15 years hence the number of deaths per thousand among children under one year of age will be only 10 ns compared with the present figure of 33. 7 “A prediction of such purport, coming from so authoritative a source as this one does, is as welcome as it is startling,” says the “Otago Dally Times,” commenting on the announcement. "It may appear to represent even more than can reasonably be hoped for. Sir Truby King acknowledges that incredibility will exist as to the possibility of reducing the rate of infantile mortality below 2 per cent. —even in New Zealand, the home of the Plunket Society. He is content, however, to stake his ‘peculiar knowledge and experience upon the attainment, of such results as he has predicted, and to exhort the incredulous to ‘wait and see’.” “It has to be realised, of course, that already through the activities and teachings of the Plunket Socety results have been brought about in the saving of infant life the very suggestion of which would have been scouted a generation ago. The statistics are very Instructive in relation to this subject. The rate of infantile mortality in New Zealand to-day is remarkably low —the lowest in the world. For the quinquennial period ended in 1930 the New Zealand figure was 37. Next on the list came Norway with 50 and Australia with 52. In England and Wales the figure was 71, and thereafter it showed increases in a long list of countries, rising to 109 in Germany, to 124 in Italy, to 140 in Japan, to 196 in Rumania, and'234 in Chile. “The very enviable position now occupied by New Zealand in respect, to infantile mortality has been attained, it is important to remember, within comparatively recent years,” the article continues. “In something over half a century the general rate has fallen by nearly 70 per cent. In the early nineties it was about 85 per 1000 births. Though an improvement set in, the rate rose to 88 in 1907. In that year the Plunket Society came into existence. The de- . cline in the morality became steady after that, and in-later years rapid. In twenty-five years the rate has been reduced by appreciably more than half. In the latest Year Book the Government Statistician expressed the opinion that a cessation of this phenomenal improvement must naturally be expected before long, although the irreducible minimum is by no means necessarily reached. What the irreducible minimum may be has yet presumably to be discovered. But the demonstration of what can be accomplished through humanitarian effort and an enlightened educational campaign represents a fulfilment so remarkable that it must go far toward encouraging the belief that Sir Truby King is not unduly optimistic, and is not predicting the Impossible, when he looks forward confidently to a reduction of the toll on infant life to a figure as low as one per hundred by the time this Dominion is fifteen years older.”