[Report 1933] / Medical Officer of Health, Whitehaven Borough.

  • Whitehaven (England). Borough Council.
Date:
1933
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1933] / Medical Officer of Health, Whitehaven Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/58 (page 12)
    The number of deaths of children under one year of age during 1933 was, according to the Registrar General’s figures, 36, viz., 21 males and 15 females, out of 409 live births regis¬ tered during the year, which gives an Infantile Mortality Rate of 88.0 per 1,000 registered live births. According to local returns the figure should be 21 males and 14 females. The Registrar General’s figures have been accepted for statistical purposes but the table on page 13 is based on the local returns. After a very successful year in 1932, when the Infantile Mortality Rate reached the low record figure of 60 per 1,000 live births, it is disappointing to record that the rate for 1933 has jumped to 88. The actual increase in the number of deaths was 8, which was practically accounted for by the increase in the number in which death was certified to be due to pre¬ maturity or congenital conditions. The number of births was % less by 41, and, as the infantile mortality rate is the number of deaths of children under one year of age calculated per thousand live births, this helped to increase the rate. Rates for a small community are subject to rather violent fluctua¬ tions and it is noticeable on looking over old records that a bad year is interspersed every five or six. Thus in 1926 the rate was 137, the average for the five years 1926—30 being 89, and in 1922 the rate was 167, the average for the five years 1921—25 being 102, so that, as I have already said in my prefatory remarks, a bad year now is nothing like as bad as a bad year used to be—in fact the figure for 1933 is still better than the best average for a five-year period up to 1930. The causes and age at death are shown in the accompany¬ ing Table, and the following Table shows the annual average number of infantile deaths and the annual average rate per 1,000 live births by five-year periods since 1890 with the corresponding rate for England and Wales, along with the actual yearly figures since 1930.