PLUNKET CAMPAIGN

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6664, 18 July 1928, Page 11

PLUNKET CAMPAIGN

BABIES. ' In an address given a couple of years ago Dr. C. E. Hercus, D.S.O. (Professor of Bacteriology, and Public Health, Otago University), said that a small boy; , in- England, when asked by his Sunday-School: teacher to name the place where babies never died, without any hesitation replied "New Zealand." This ideal—the total abolition of foetal deaths—was beyond all dreams. Dir. Truby King (now gfir Truby, King), he noticed, placed the irreducible infantile mortality rate, iie. tho number of deathsof infants under one year of age per ,1000 . births registered—at 20, and this .rate wasVthe objective towards which ■ the Society moved. /Although • ufifortuhately babies still died in New,; !Zealand; : it 'was a,fact-that it held the proud 'position of 'having the lowest infantilo death-rate in the world.

• ThereX were critics who said that there-,bad .been ,other factors operating in-//thisi?qdueriQn ..wbi<b-bad powerful ]as rthe work -of tho Society; They ■;maintained that' their -salubrious climate, the virility of their, people, tho great; advances im public sanitation, and the falling birth-rate wore of equal importance, but-it was only necessary graph- on tho back of the ■baek-coyerof the Socicty’s-.annual report, to show that no such factors as/ those he had mentioned cbuld account for the rapid fall in infantile mortality which commenced in 1907, Some new factor s bad undoubtedly commenced to operate at this period, and that factor had,;’been the Royal New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children (Plunket Society). Tho solid achievement which its report presented demonstrated conclusively that this Sobiety-'-stbod in the very front rank amongst the workers in preventive medicine in this. Dominion.