Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, OCT. 28, 1933. THE PEOPLE’S HEALTH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 284, 28 October 1933, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. SATURDAY, OCT. 28, 1933. THE PEOPLE’S HEALTH.

A most interesting- feature of tlie annual report of tlie Department of Health is its estimation of tlie depression’s effect upon the public health. Throughout the world health administrations have viewed with anxiety the possible consequences in this direction of the prolonged economic upheaval. Practically the whole civilised world is affected, and with it millions of people. Quite recently a noted authority in Sir George Newman, chief medical officer of the British Ministry of Health, in pointing out that the surest of all tests of grave results are tlie mortality returns, was able to say that the death rate of England and Wales as a whole, and even of many of the depressed areas themselves, has been uniformly decreasing. Neither, he added, was there any evidence of increased morbidity. Since 1921-25 the mortality rates for England and Wales have been steadily declining, and the good movement was continued last year when the number of deaths from disease was the lowest ever recorded in Britain. The decline in tuberculosis was notable, and this affords evidence that the level of nutrition, especially of children, could not have been lowered to the extent critics declare it has. The report of New Zealand’s Department of Health is also most reassuring. There are three sources which throw light on the problem—the death rate, the morbidity returns supplied by the public hospitals, and the records of examinations of school children performed by the School Medical Service. Each supplies evidence of a valuable nature. The general death rate, infant moratality, and the mortality from tuberculosis were all lower in 1932 than in any other statistical period in the Dominion’s history. While admitting that this is all to the good, the report says it may be argued that the • death returns do not represent the true position, as the effects of malnutrition, are delayed, and while causing sickness may not have had time as yet to affect the death rate. The answer is in the records of the hospitals which negative any suggestion of increasing morbidity arising’ from the depression. In 1927-28 the proportion of patients treated in the public hospitals per one thousand of population was 55.08; in 1931-32 it was 56.06, a slightly worse figure but one much better than in the intervening years when it reached to 60.75 in 1929-30. The. school medical officers, further, show by their examination that the health of school children has been well maintained, there being an actual decline since 1929 in the percentage rate of childi’en suffering from malnutrition. In that year tlie figure was 7.06 and for 1931-32 it was 5.81. The Department claims reliability for its figures since they refer- to between 60,000 and 70,000 annual examinations over a period in which the service and the standard of examination “have remained fairly constant.” Moreover, a close watch has been specially kept on the position by the medical officers, and from their report and other statistics the Director-General sums up the position that, measured by mortality and morbidity rates, the economic crisis has not yet shown any detrimental effect on the public health; there has been no increase in the proportion of inpatients treated in public hospitals; and that, on the whole, the nutrition of the school children has been well maintained, although there is some evidence that a group of city children is showing clinical signs of malmitrition due to the economic position. It is, however, interesting to note that the health of country children is very little if at

all affected, and it is palpable that this should be so. Generally, New Zealand people are a healthy race. The death rate last year was the lowest ever recorded ; infant mortality was lower than ever before; the tuberculosis death rate steadily improves, and last year the deaths from cancer fell slightly. A disquieting feature, however, is the further fall in the birth rate.