High Infant Mortality

Rate in Polynesia

Mostly Caused by Ignorance, Says

Correspondent

Mangaia, Cl.

ONE of the major headaches of local doctors, nurses and AMP’s is the Polynesian who, by reason of per sonality or lack of education, is unfit for parenthood.

One such case, typical of its kind, oc curred recently in the country district of this island. A wayward village girl, who persisted, in spite of her condition, in normal activities with total disregard of natural signs that should have been a warning, gave birth to a child, alone and unattended, upon the inland highway.

Cases of this kind are common enough and the girl in question appears to have had the intelligence to perform the usual offices for herself.

Afterwards, she made her way, with the

newborn babe, into the bush, where she was later found. Brought into the beach settlement and made comfortable there, she should have been all right. Not long after, however, the child born thus in auspiciously died from choking.

THE combination of waywardness and ignorance, among a certain type of village girl reflects little credit upon Island education and family discipline.

A compulsory pre-natal clinic, at which pregnant girls are compelled to attend for medical advice, might be one means of insuring that such incidents would not occur. The ignorant, who persists in gadding about —almost till the last moment, are a danger both to their own health and to that of the coming child.

Another factor making for infant morality, even where native children are well cared for, is the “gum lancer.” This functionary is generally an eldery woman of the village, who makes a speciality of cuttin" the gums of teething Poly nesian infants with a small knife—often a rusty pen-knife. The number of un explained deaths, probably due to tetanus or to a septic condition, has never been investigated. In the writer’s view, these insanitary practitioners should be sternly prohibited, and the “lancing” done, where the need is indicated, by the local nurse or NMP.

Although we now have a Child Wel fare movement here, the scope for in vestigation and remedying of the causes of infant mortality is great; incompetent parenthood, insanitary huts, wrong feed ing, and the “lancers” cited, all con tribute to a potentially high death-rate, to the detriment of healthy increase in the native population of the island.

Miss Doreen Leech, anew nursing re cruit to the Melanesian Mission, was due to arrive in the Hebrides from the UK early in 1950.