CHILDREN AN ASSET.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 21 November 1924, Page 2

CHILDREN AN ASSET.

CANADA'S HIGH MORTALITY.

. Prepared under tie direction of Dr. J. A. Amyot, Deputy Minister, Department of Health, Canada, Dr. Helen MacMurchy, Chief of Child Welfare Division of that Dominion, contributes an article to “Natural Resources of Canada,” in which she remarks: Canada, has a healthful climate, hut in order to preserve and develop in the highest degree the great resource represented by life it is neeessary to follow certain broad lines. How is it with onr children? The answer is given by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. The official records for 1922 (the latest year for which statistics are available) show that among children from the ages of one to' four years there was a total mortality of 4460. Nearly half of these died of diseases regarded as preventable —measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, and the group including bronchitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and “colds.” * There were numerous other diseases, but 1821 Canadian children front one to four years of age died front the diseases enumerated above

To prevent; children from getting these diseases it is neecssary to realise how they get the infection. Every one of these diseases is “passed on” by contact. One member of a family spabzes and scatters innumerable germs into the air, and in this and other ways the cold “goes through the house.” Bronchitis and pneumonia “happen” iit a similar way. Tuberculosis is a disease that is in all probability “caught” in early childhood. Contact again, just the same as in “colds” and in other ways. Tuberculosis is “passed on.” by those who have it, perhaps also through milk. Great care should be exercised to ensure that and the milker g are healthy and clean and that all utensils are spotless. Thp other four diseases, namely, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and diphtheria, are known as “children’s diseases,” meaning that the children have little protection against them. They are, as we say, “not imnnine,” but get more So every year. If exposed to these diseases tinder five years of age they will likely take the infection and may die, but if protected against infection till about twelve of fourteen years old their immunity will be so much greater that most of" them will not fake the disease at all.

Take scarlet fever, for example. It is very often fatal to a child under four years, but protect that child from infection until he is fourteen, and, if lie then takes the fever, he may have a had attack, btit will have gained sufficient iniftiunity to sate hiS life. It is the same with measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria. Against diphtheria we have the great remedy of anti-toxin. If given at the beginning of the illness, the child almost always recovers. It seems probable that we shall soon have an antitoxin for scarlet fever which will give as good results. Over 4000 deaths of children between one and four years i s a terrible loss to a country in a. year, but Canada suffers two even greater losses. According to the official figures published by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics 1248 mothers died in childbirth, or 24 every week in Canada in 1922 ; and the mortality of the infants (those under one year old) for the same period was 25,523, or 490 a week. The maternal mortality of Canada is 4.9 for every 1000 births, of flatly twice as great as that of England and Wales. Our infant mortality i s 101, or more than twice that of New Zealand.

Can Canada afford to lose 514 mothers and babies every week?