AUTHORITIES' RESPONSIBILITIES : DISCUSSION 137 



Infants' hospitals should be established in every 

 community to provide for the babies requiring medical 

 and surgical care. Such babies do much better and 

 are more intelligently cared for in hospitals designed 

 and adapted for the care of young infants. The 

 babies' ward in the general hospital or in a children's 

 hospital is not so productive of good results. 



DISCUSSION. 



Dr. S. G. MOORE (Huddersfield) said that only the pre- 

 vious week was issued from the Local Government Board 

 the Second Report on Infant and Child Mortality in England 

 and Wales by the Medical Officer of the Board. That 

 Report covered the ground completely, and it dealt with 

 the subject in a thoroughly satisfactory and masterly 

 manner. What he (Dr. Moore) intended originally to deal 

 with was the present position of infant mortality and death 

 notification in this country, and that was the same thing as 

 had been done in the Local Government Board's Report. 

 Perhaps it would have been well if he had simply announced 

 that his paper would not be given, but there were just two 

 things to which he would like to refer briefly. The second 

 page of the Report to which he had referred contained the 

 following statements: "It is well known that after a long 

 series of years, during which no appreciable sustained 

 improvement occurred, a great decline in infant mortality 

 has been experienced in recent years. The amount of 

 saving of life that has been secured may be judged by the 

 following illustration. In the seven years from 1906 to 

 1912 736,682 infants under i year died in England and 

 Wales, the average annual death-rate being 115 per 

 1,000 births. Had the infantile death-rate been 144 per 

 1,000 births, the average rate for the seven years from 

 1899 to 1905, then 922,454 infants would have died in the 

 seven years from 1906 to 1912. The improved conditions 

 have implied a saving of 185,772 lives of infants during these 

 seven years." He thought that those figures could hardly 

 have too much importance given to them, and in the Report 

 it was set forth, as it was in Dr. Newsholme's former 

 Report, that that improvement must be ascribed at least in 

 part to the work which had been undertaken directly with 

 a view to securing that object. The other point to which 

 he wished to refer was that in any organized effort to secure 

 amelioration of the conditions affecting newly-born infants 



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