Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1920 — VIENNA DEATH RATE BECOMES APPALLING [ARTICLE]

VIENNA DEATH RATE BECOMES APPALLING

Condition of Children Even More Harrowing, Declares Authority on City’s Desperate Plight. Five years of famine have resultea In greatly Increased mortality and morbidity in Vienna which before the war was counted as one of the healthiest cities In Europe. Figures prepared by Dr. Gustave Bohn, head of the Vienna Health Department, show that In 1913 the death rate was 15.3 per thousand. In 1918 the rate was 22.5 per thousand*an increase of more than 47 per cent. Professor Hans Spel of the University of Vienna, says that “even more terrible than the mortality statistics are those referring to the condition of children and their mothers. Owing to under-nourishment few mothers can nurse their babies, and the milk , shortage afreets not only Infants, but all children in spite of all that has been done to help. At Professor Clemens Pirquet’s clinic in the university some 54,849 children were examined in 1918. Only 4,637 of these or about one-thlrtpentli were passed as skin good, fat good; 23,609 were pale and thin, or very pale and very thin. “The health of these children shows most disquieting features. Skin-disease, rachitis and Barlow’s disease are rife. “The chief medical officer of Vienna asks, ‘What is going to happen to these under-fed children, In whose bodies the germ es tuberculosis Is latent, when they reach the twenties, at which time it becomes active?’ ” To combat these conditions the American Relief Administration of which Herbert Hoover is chairman fed last winter In the city of Vienna soma 800,000 of the destitute and undernourished children, supplying them with a substantial meal of American food, served in a number of large kitchens opened for that purpose. The conditions in Vienna are more or less typical of those in Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Last year the Relief Administration was able to reach some 3,500,000 under-nourished children and this winter the program calls fer the feeding of a like number, but eight of the great charitable organizations of America have united under the . name of the European Relief Council, of which Mr. Hoover ip tb* chairman.

The child feeding ftask will be carried on not enly by the American Relief Administration but by the American Red Cross, the American Friends’ Service Committee (Quakers), the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the Knlghta of Columbus, the Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. An appeal for $33,000,000 has been made and the organizations named have joined in raising the sum.