Maternal Mortality Sir George Newman, the Chief Medical Officer of
the Ministry of Health, is on the whole encouraging in his annual report, except in regard to maternal mortality. In the last half-century the death-rate has fallen from 21 to 12 per thousand, the infant mortality rate has been halved, and the consumption death-rate is but a fourth of what it was. The cancer death-rate has risen slightly-, but that is assigned in part to the increased proportion of aged persons in the community and in part to the improved diagnosis which detects cancer where it might formerly have been missed. But in all these improvements the mothers bearing children have not shared. Their mortality rate is stationary, and yet half the deaths of women in childbirth are preventable. The average rate is 4 per thousand, but in five Lancashire cotton towns the rate is as high as 6 or 7 per thousand, though in large maternity hospitals it is no more than 1.5 per thousand. Sir George imputes the blame to apathetic local authorities, to half- trained nurses and to doctors who are imperfectly qualified in midwifery and ante-natal treatment. Year after year the same complaint is made. Dr. Janet Campbell brought the same facts out forcibly in her recent report on the subject. Maternity centres, like other public health agencies, are threatened by over-zealous economists. Women members of Parliament might make this question their special care and see that the interests of their sex receive attention.
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