High Infant Mortality in Cooks

Cooks

lOMPARED with its parent ' country, New Zealand, infant mortality in the Cook Islands revealed in the 1952 annual re rt, is disturbingly high—and con lerably higher in the latest ures issued, than it has been for ne years.

Whereas the rate in New Zealand about 28 per thousand live births, was 138 per thousand in the oks last year, and 101 the previ s year. rhe report notes a good deal of ilnutrition amongst infants and ys that the Administration sup es free milk to all such cases re rted.

Infant mortality accounted last ar for 37% of the deaths, most ing between 6 and 12 months of e.