REDUCING INFANT MORTALITY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 108, 8 May 1923, Page 8

REDUCING INFANT MORTALITY

TESTIMONY TO VALUE OF PLUN-

KET SYSTEM.

There was recently published in New Zealand a telegram ..from Sydney giving a short summary of a statement made by Mr. Innes-Noad in reply to some remarks of Dr. Truby King on child welfare at the Red Cross Rooms, Wellington. A recognition of the valuable work of Dr. Truby King and of the Plunket Society in New Zealand is given in the following article which appears in the "Sydney Morning Herald" : — "Mr. Innes-Noad, M.L.C., president of the Royal Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies, referring to a cable message from Wellington stating that Dr. Truby King, in comparing the iafant mortality rate of New Zealand with that of Australia, gave figures showing that fifteen years ago the death rate was the same for both countries (about 80 per thousand), and that for 1921 the New Zealand death rate had fallen to 47 per thousand, the Australian rate standing at 69''per thousand. In this State, at' any rate, states Mr. InnesNoad, the rate is now very little behind that of New Zealand. The latest statistics show that since 1904, when the infantile death rate was 101.7, we have reduced it until is"l922"it stands at 54.0. Therefore, in New South Wales we have now only seven more deaths of children under one year of age per thousand than they have in New Zealand. The decline in infant mortality rate in New South Wales, according to Mr. Innes-Noad, has been very rapid since the introduction of the baby clinics in 1914, when it was 72.7. • This, and the provision of .'similar...' agencies, such as welfare, centres and training schools for nurses—where the Plunket system •in vogue in New, Zealand is being taught—have materially assisted in bringing^ about" this most desirable decline. New Zealand for a long time has claimed the lowest infant mortality rate in the world, but at the 1 rate at which New South Wales is progressing it will not be very long before it can overtake, and, if possible, surpass' New Zealand in her achievements."