The question of infant mortality: from the past to the future
Rosa Ballester, PhD.
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The new social construction of childhood
“To those parents who to bring up the new child in
the new century”
Ellen Key, The Century of Children,Stockholm, 1900
The background: Demographic and HealthTransition
• The decrease of infant mortality is one of the most perceptible indicators for measuring the progress made in specific geographical areas
Children´s diseases in the Old Regime
• The medical works corresponding to the Aristotelian-Galenic Tradition offer a wide range of the most frequent pathologies
• The Old Regime was unable to provide for its poor • The dream of a paternalistic institution as a hospital for abandoned children had failed
Poverty and Foundling Hospitals
The birth of Paediatrics
• Paediatrics as a specialty arosed in the new hospital medicine • Paris medical school during the first half of the XIXth Century was in head of this process
The new social construction of childhood (1)
• In the 1920´s children had become both a wellfare object of value and a social problem • The “rediscovery” of the child
The new social construction of childhood (2) • The “rediscovery” of the child at the turn of the XXth century • From “working-children” to “ school children”
Infant mortality: social attitudes
• Tradi-tional vision: • New vision:
• fatalism
Infant mortalitypre ventable
Infant mortality: social responses *Leagues against infant mortality *Citizens movements of child protection
Chilhood as value
»Economic value of infant life »Ethical value »The value of child is sustained in its importance for the state,family and science
Child mortality: an open struggle
»Identification of enemies
»Weapons use to fight in front of the causes of death
The medical identity of the child (1)
»The child becomes a valuable object of scientific knowledge between XIXth and XXth centuries »Pediatricians conferred on the child its own identity
The medical identity of the child (2)
»The study of human growth/Anthropometry »Studies on metabolism in the first stages of life »Specific diagnostic and therapeutic procedures
• The XXth century started the health campaigns for infant well-being and welfare • Decreasing infant mortality has became a democratic value and a standard for social progress
CONCLUSIONS
CONCLUSIONS
• The history of infant health and welfare teach us how the improvement was due both the scientific foundations of paediatrics and the fight against poverty and inequality.
“There is therefore no doubt that there has
been a great improvement in child health, particularly since the beginning of the century. It is not possible to asses accurately the contribution of medical services to this improvement, but it can safely be said that they have been less important than the increase in standard of living and environmental control”
Th Mac Keown, CR Lowe. An introduction to Social Medicine. Oxford: BlacKwell, 1966