British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 706

CHAPTER XVI.

Palestine Moslems

1924-26 1927-29 1030-32 1933-85 1986-38 1939-41 1942-44

28.0 80.2 25.8 24.8 21.2 21.2 18.7

% decrease from 1927-29 to 1942-4'1

Table 10.

EGYPT

Whole country

26.0 26.3 26.7 27.2 27.5 26.1 28.7 **

18.1% -

Places with health bureau*

33.7 31.3 28.7 28.4 29.8 30.3

In order to appreciate how rapid has been the reduction in Moslem mortality the following facts should be noted :

(a) A reduction of mortality rate from 30.2 per 1,000 in 1927-29 to 18. 7 per 1,000 means a reduction of 38 per cent. in 15 years or 2.5 per cent. per year, which is a considerable improvement even by European standards.

(b) In 1927-29 the mortality of Palestinian Moslems was about equal to the average mortality of Europe around 1851-60***. In 1942-44 it was considerably lower than that prevailing in Europe as a whole in 1901/10***. In this respect therefore the improvement among Palestinian Moslems in the past 15 years has been even greater than that improvement which in the case of Europe occupied a period of 50 years.

(c) In 1926-30 the Moslem community in Palestine was one of the most backward of the world, its mortality rate (28.3) being surpassed by only 2 countries out of 64 included in the list of the League of Nations. The present death rate of Moslem Palestine (18. 7) is lower than the death rate found in the last pre-war year (1938) in 16 out of 66 countries recorded in the list of the League of Nations.

171. Since the death-rate is a rather crude method of measuring mortality, it may be of some interest to examine the progress made by Palestinian Moslems in the field of reduction of mortality, by means of a more refined method. Table 11 shows some figures extracted from life tables for Moslems of Palestine in 1926-27, 1930-32, 1933-35, 1936-38, 1939-41and1942-44, compiled recently by the Department of Statistics, as compared to those of a few other countries.
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* Notification in those places is more complete.
** 1942 only .
*** Petit annuaire statistique de Ja Pologue, 1938.

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