Abstract
THE April issue of the Statistical Bulletin issued by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York contains an instructive editorialon the health of Canada in 1940. During the last three months of 1939 and almost the whole of 1940 the mortality record in Canada was very favourable; but it showed some rise in December and the first quarter of 1941 owing to the epidemic of influenza which occurred at the end of 1940. As a whole, however, the standardized death–rate of the Canadian Industrial policy holders less than seventy–five years of age was only 592.1 per 100,000, or 12.1 per cent below the average rate for the five preceding years. Among children the drop in mortality was as much as 30 per cent. The greatest improvement took place in the acute and infectious conditions, while cancer and diabetes showed higher rates than in previous years. The decline in the principal infectious diseases in children, namely, measles, scarlet fever, whooping cough and diphtheria was 43 per cent since 1935–39. For measles and scarlet fever the rate was less than two thirds of the average for the preceding five years, and for diphtheria the 1940 rate was little more than one half of the earlier rate. Whooping cough, with a rate of 5.1 per 100,000 in 1940, or more than that for the other three combined, is to–day the most serious of these diseases of childhood. Diseases of the heart, arteries and kidneys together accounted for more than one third of the mortality. As regards tuberculosis the death–rate for the first time fell below 50 per 100,000, the decline since 1935 being 15 per cent. Child–bearing has become definitely safer in Canada, the puerperal death–rate having fallen to 6.2 per 100,000 in 1940 from 9.0 in the preceding five–year period. Lastly, there was an appreciable decline in deaths from violence.
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The Health of Canada. Nature 148, 194 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148194c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148194c0