Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of the Gold Coast.

Date:
[1934]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the social and economic progress of the people of the Gold Coast. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER IV. HEALTH. European Community. The health of the European community in 1933-34 as judged by the statistics available compared unfavourably with the record of the previous year. Not only were the invaliding and death-rates higher in officials but the death-rate was also higher in non-officials as may be seen in the following table :— TABLE I. European. Invaliding rate per t lousand resident. Death-rate per thousand resident. 1932-33. 1933-34. * Ten-year average. 1932-33. 1933-34. Officials 38 49 46 1.0 3.5 Non-officials 17 17 22 4.5 6.5 In many cases of invaliding and of death the cause was directly due to tropical conditions as, for example, malaria and blackwater fever. This is a timely reminder that, although conditions have improved very considerably in the past two decades or so, the battle with preventible tropical disease has not yet been won. It would, of course, be unwise to attach too much importance to yearly fluctuations in the morbidity and mortality rates of a community of a few thousand souls since the probable error is considerable when dealing with small figures. African Community. Whilst the invalidings of African officials numbered 33 in 1933-34 as compared with an additional one during the previous year, the number of deaths increased from 12 to 20 ; consequently there ^re some grounds for the belief that the African official community did not enjoy such good health. This is confirmed to some extent by the fact that the weighted average death-rate for the population in some thirty-one registration areas was slightly higher in the calendar year being 22.2 in 1933 as compared with 21.6 in 1932. The corresponding birth-rates were 34 for 1933 and 34.7 for 1932. In spite of a good deal that has been said to the contrary, there is little in the statistics available to suggest that the mass of the population is suffering physically from the continuation of the economic depression.
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