INFANTILE MORTALITY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 151, 30 June 1928, Page 11

INFANTILE MORTALITY

RATE HIGH IN CANADA (From "Tho Post's" Representative.) VANCOUVER, 30th May. Tho provinces of Canada and tho Dominion Government are co-operating' in an effort to reduce the high rate of infantile mortality, which is in the vicinity, of 90 per thousand birth, compared •with 43 in New Zealand, 58 in Australia, 76 in Britain, and 78 in South Africa. Some extraordinary results have followed concentrated campaigns in reducing tho death rate of infants. In a mining settlement in Quebec, whore SO per cent, of the world's asbestos is produced, the rate has been Reduced from j 300 to 76 in five years, while the birth rate has increased. It was reduced from. 154 to 87 in a sector of the Montreal municipality, where the University of Montreal utilised tho services of public health nurses undergoing training. The Canadian Bod Cross has established a system of visiting housekeepers, who do the regular housework and give the mother a chanco to recover her normal strength. Comparison of the death rate in tho principal cities is: Vancouver, 45; Toronto, 73; Ottawa, 115; Montreal, 123. Canadian births number 240,000 annually, a decline of 10,000, compared with 1920, and tho infantile death rate of 90 per thousand births is regarded aa altogether too high, having regard to tho healthy nature of the country and its urban and rural settlements. The loader in the national movement for reducing the death rate among infants is Dr. Helen MacMurehy, in charge of the Child Welfare Division of tho Department of Public Health at Ottawa.