A retired pediatrician has written a new book highlighting the public health initiatives that dramatically reduced child mortality in Newfoundland and Labrador over the last century.
Before Confederation, child mortality rates in Newfoundland and Labrador were shockingly high with many children succumbing to infectious diseases like TB, cholera, typhus, gastroenteritis and whooping cough.
Dr. Rick Cooper, a former Janeway pediatrician and retired faculty member at MUN’s medical school, felt it was important to highlight the public health initiatives that had such a profound impact on reducing local childhood mortality rates.
He says the widespread emergence of antibiotics made a huge difference, but government’s public health initiatives are what really drove more positive outcomes.
He says you can do what they did during Commission of Government and build cottage hospitals and send medical boats to every harbour, “but if the people are poor, and they haven’t got enough to eat, all the medical care is not going to work. Everything came together in the latter part of the 20th century, and made a whole lot of improvements in children.”
‘Only a Baby Gone; A History of Child Health and Welfare in Newfoundland Before 1949’ is published by Boulder Books and is available online or at local book stores.
