PHYSICAL HEALTH

Te Ao Hou, December 1960, Page 6

PHYSICAL HEALTH The natural increase rate of the Maori is one of the highest in the world. The European natural increase rate in 1958 was 12.6 per thousand while the Maori was 37.57 per thousand. These are rather amazing figures, when one realises that at the turn of the century, the Maori was doomed to extinction. Behind these figures, how-over, there lies a rather tragic story. of a short expectation of life, a low standard of health, and in most age groups an incredibly high death-rate as compared with similar age groups among Europeans. The figures we have today of a high birth-rate, a high death-rate, despite the high natural increases of population, tell only of a tremendous wastage of effort on the part of the Maori people, in the form of grief, loss of economic potential when people are ill, and a waste of money and effort on children who do not live long enough to fulfill their proper destiny in the community. The Maori today has an expectation of life of only 54 years, as compared with the 68 years for the European—a difference of 14 years. This figure was for 1950–52 and there is a slight improvement in the expectation of life for both races, but the relative differences remain the same. You can see what is happening to us when we lose people who are our leaders at the age of 54. It means that every Maori child born at a time when we would want to stimulate him in an all-out effort to improve his economic and educational standards, has fourteen years less life in which to pack all its usefulness, as compared with the European.

The population structure of our people is quite phenomenal in that it resembles the Eiffel Tower. At the base we have an enormous length representing the under-five age group, and then in each ascending age-group we have the structure pulling back at quite a quick recession so that the whole appearance of the Maori population is rather like a truncated triangle with its sides moving less sharply as the age groups drop step by step from much smaller percentage death-rates. Because there is a much smaller proportion of Maoris in the higher age groups where death must inevitably occur, the crude death-rate of the Maori is much the same as the European. In this way, figures tend to conceal the true position. If, however, we compare deaths with specific ages per hundred-thousand, we find a totally different story. We must remember that 50% of Maoris having half or more Maori blood are under the age of fifteen years. This is an incredible proportion and raises all sorts of problems of overcrowding and lack of housing. And if we take this group and compare the death-rate of the pre-school child with that of the European, we find that three times the number of Maori children die in this period, as compared with the European child. In the group five to fourteen years there is a lower death-rate, but again it is four times greater in the Maori as compared with the non-Maori group. In the group fifteen to twenty-five years, the death-rate among men is twice as heavy among Maoris, but four times as heavy among the women of the race, because it is here in this age-group that T.B. takes its heaviest toll of Maori women. In the age group 24–44 years, the Maori death-rate is again three times that of the European. In the 45 plus age group, the disparity in the death rates declines, but it is still higher among Maoris. The reason for the death rate coming closer in proximity to the European in this age-group, is that we feel only the stronger Maori reaches this age group in the first place.