Annual report on the Medical Department / Sierra Leone.

  • Sierra Leone. Medical Department.
Date:
[1911]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the Medical Department / Sierra Leone. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/146 (page 5)
    o P1 IBLIC HEALTH.—(Freetown). Colony.—The population of the Colony according to the census returns for the year was 75,572, and the number of deaths registered was 1,314, a death rate of 17 per 1,000. The births registered number 1,116, which gives a birth rate of 14 per 1,000. Registration in the Colony is not, however, reliable owing to the law not being compulsory. In the City of Freetown registration is more or less compulsory and is therefore more reliable, and the figures may be taken as showing approximately the true state of things as regards birth and death rates. The population of Freetown by the 1911 census was 34,090, the births registered numbered 501, and the deaths numbered 747, these figures show a birth rate of 14 and a death rate of 21 per 1,000 respectively. The ten chief causes of death were, in the order given, as follows :— 1. Diseases of the Digestive System. 2. Diseases of the Nervous System. 3. Diseases of the Respiratory System. 4. Debility. 5. Fever (Malarial (?)) 6. Diseases? of the Circulatory System. »/ «y 7. Rheumatism. 8. Premature Birth. 9. Diseases of the Urinary System. 10. Tubercle. It must, however, be stated that only about 25 per cent, of the deaths registered are certified to by Medical Practitioners. o « General Native Population.—Of the total deaths registered in Freetown during the year, 156 occurred under the age of twelve months, 58 less than the previous year, and showing an infantile death rate of 310 per 1,000 births, a decrease of 58 on the rate for 1910. The infantile death rate for the past ten years was : Year 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 Rate 466 471 388 461 434 357 351 1909 1910 3,44 368 1911 310 From this it will be seen that last year was the lowest on record. One fact stands out in the medical history of Freetown for 1911, where we know special anti-mosquito measures have been strictly enforced from early in 1910, and that is the marked reduction in the number of deaths from fever (fever in this case meaning all cases of death in which temperature was the most prominent symptom), as noticed by the friends of the deceased and given as the cause of death to the Registrar, thus : In 1910 the deaths registered as due to Fever numbered 122. In 1911 the deaths registered as due to Fever numbered 68.