[Report 1969] / Medical Officer of Health, Warwickshire County Council.

  • Warwickshire County Council
Date:
1969
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1969] / Medical Officer of Health, Warwickshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/62 page 4
    Vital Statistics The estimated mid-1969 population of the administrative County was 607,240. The estimated increase in population for the administrative County from mid-1968 to mid-1969 was 4-24%. Most of this increase was in the Chelmsley Wood area; Meriden Rural District increased in population by 27-7%. In Warwick Rural District and Southam Rural District the increases were nearly 4%. For the rest of the County the increase was below 1 %. In comparison, the national average increase was 0-48 %. There were 10,950 registered births in the County in 1969, of which 10,797 were live births and 153 stillbirths. The live birth rate has steadily fallen from 18-6 per 1,000 population in 1964 (England and Wales 18-5) to 16-7 in 1969 (England and Wales 16-3). The stillbirth rate for 1969 was 14-0 per 1,000 births compared with a national rate of 13-2. The County stillbirth rates have remained steady at around this figure for several years. For comparative pur¬ poses the stillbirth rates should not be used alone; a better comparison is the perinatal mortality rate, which is a measure of stillbirths plus deaths within the first week of life. In 1969 the perinatal mortality rate for the County was 22T and for England and Wales 23-4, both figures the lowest yet recorded for these communities. There were 163 deaths of infants in the first year of life in the County, giving an infant mortality rate of 15T per 1,000 live births (England and Wales 18T). This is a valuable statistical measure and, together with the maternal mortality rate, is probably the most reliable simple statistical measurement of the quality of a community’s standards of parental and professional care. The figures for 1969, both local and national, are encouraging. A quarter of these deaths are from serious congenital malformations and it is unrealistic ever to expect a nil rate. However many infant deaths from respiratory and other infections and from accident, especially cot deaths, are probably avoidable. The illegitimate live birth rate has fallen both in the County and for England and Wales as a whole. 6-2 % of County live births were illegitimate compared with 8-5 % in 1968. It would be unwise to attempt to interpret at this early stage an apparent check of the trend of increase of the last few years. The figures for 1970 will be very interesting. Not unexpectedly the illegitimate stillbirth rate is higher than the legitimate stillbirth rate both for this County and nationally. It is recognised that the illegitimate child has a poorer chance of surviving the pregnancy, birth and first year of life. It is encouraging therefore to see that the infant mortality rate for illegitimate children in 1969 in this County was not significantly higher than the infant mortality rate for legitimate children in Warwickshire. The numbers of births concerned are small but the figures are encouraging. (These figures and national figures for comparison are given in detail on page 10). The maternal mortality rate for this County in 1969 was 1-8 per 10,000 births, approximately the same as for England and Wales. In real terms there were two maternal deaths here in 1969. Although there were four in 1968 there have been two years in which there was only one, and one of those years was as long ago as 1961. The cases in 1969 were : (1) A woman of 35 who died in a nursing home from a pulmonary embolism complicating an abortion. (2) A woman of 29, pregnant for the second time (the first pregnancy also having been toxaemic) who died from eclampsia from a toxaemic labour in hospital and forceps delivery of a stillborn immature baby. The death rate for the County in 1969 was 10-6 per 1,000 population compared with 1T9 for England and Wales. The total death rates locally and nationally are not rising, but certain specific death rates—the cancer death rate and lung cancer death rates for males and females—continue to rise. Other causes of death to which I would draw attention are :— Motor Vehicle Accidents—110 deaths in 1969 96 deaths in 1968
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