INFANT WELFARE

Evening Post, Issue 27, 31 July 1935, Page 11

INFANT WELFARE

WONDERFUL RECORD

In a foreword contributed to this year's annual report of the Plunket Society, Dr. William Young says:—:

"In this year of King George's Silver Jubilee it is instructive to look back and see how high the rate of infant mortality in New Zealand was before the reign began. In the last five years of King Edward's reign, the period in which our Plunket system was founded, the average annual death rate for infants between the ages of one and eleven months was 39.34 per 1000 live births, whilst for the five years before King George's Jubilee the rate was 9.60, that is to.say, less than one-fourth the previous death rate. "The detractors of our system have, said that we save many babies who would be better dead. They forget that, under the old system, or want of system, apart from babies who died, there were many more whose health was undermined and who might have been better dead. Human life, except amongst barbarians, is always sacred, and doctors long ago accepted the principle, a principle approved of by the i community, that their duty was to save 'life, however worthless it may seem. This is'the principle acted upon by our i society, and we are proud of the result." ' '' ' ■ ■