Childbirth transformation and new style midwifery in Beijing, 1926 – 1937

Figures & data

Figure 1. Map of Beijing’s first health district and Qinghe district, 1936.

Figure 2. Percentage of infants delivered by different birth attendants in Beijing’s first health district, 1926–1937.

Table 1. Percentage of infants delivered by different birth attendants in Beijing’s first health district (1932–1937) and Beijing’s all districts (1934).

	Physicians and new style midwives	Traditional midwives (trained)	Traditional midwives (untrained)	Others	Unknown	Total number of births
Beijing’s first health district (1932–1937)	40.5%	30.2%	7.8%	21.5%	0	16,737
Beijing’s all districts (1934)	11.2%	25.7%	3.5%	52.0%	7.6%	22,184

Source: Statistics of the first health district are calculated based on Appendix C; statistics of Beijing come from Beipingshi weishengju [Beiping metropolitan health bureau] (1935, p.9, table 9).

Table 2. Neonatal mortality rate and birth attendants in Beijing’s first health district, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1937 (categorized in four groups).

	Physicians and new style midwives			Traditional midwives (trained)			Traditional midwives (untrained)			Others
Year	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰
1932	833	33	39.6	708	38	53.7	352	33	93.8	601	46	76.5
1933	934	24	25.7	1,042	49	47.0	190	10	52.6	621	34	54.8
1934	1,228	76	61.9	947	28	29.6	145	20	137.9	516	14	27.1
1935	1,288	50	38.8	896	36	40.2	154	5	32.5	562	37	65.8
1937	1,101	43	39.1	748	37	49.5	288	66	229.0	682	unknown	unknown
Average			42.0			43.3			118.7			57.0

1. Source: Beipingshi gong’anju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1933); Beipingshi weishengchu diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1934); Beipingshi weishengju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1935, 1936); Beijingshi weishengju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1938).

2. The data of neonatal mortality for 1936 are missing, and therefore the year 1936 is excluded in the table.

3. Information of neonatal mortality in the column of ‘others’ for 1937 is absent.

Table 3. Neonatal mortality rate and birth attendants in Beijing’s first health district, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1937 (categorized in two groups).

	Trained attendants			Untrained attendants
Year	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰	Number of births	Number of neonatal mortality	NMR‰
1932	1,541	71	46.1	953	79	82.9
1933	1,976	73	36.9	811	44	54.3
1934	2,175	104	47.8	661	34	51.4
1935	2,184	86	39.4	716	42	58.7
1937	1,849	80	43.3	970	66	68.0
Average			42.6			64.5

Source: Adjusted from Table 2.

Table 4. Neonatal mortality rate and birth attendants in Beijing’s first health district (categorized by the causes of death), 1932–1935.

	Physicians and new style midwives		Traditional midwives (trained)		Traditional midwives (untrained)		Others
Causes of death	Number of deaths	NMR‰	Number of deaths	NMR‰	Number of deaths	NMR‰	Number of deaths	NMR‰
Prematurity and debility	129	30.1	94	26.1	27	32.1	77	33.5
Neonatal convulsions and tetanus	26	6.1	37	10.3	35	41.6	41	17.8
Respiratory diseases	13	3.0	11	3.1	4	4.8	10	4.4
Other infectious diseases	4	0.9	3	0.8	0	0	1	0.4
Diarrhea	3	0.7	4	1.1	2	2.4	1	0.4
Other causes	8	1.9	2	0.6	0	0	1	0.4
Total number of births	4,283		3,593		841		2,300

Source: Beipingshi gong’anju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo, (1933); Beipingshi weishengchu diyi weishengqu shiwusuo, (1934); Beipingshi weishengju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1935, 1936).

Figure 3. IMR of Beijing’s first health district, Qinghe town and Beijing (all districts), 1926–1938.

Figure 4. MMR of Beijing’s first health district and Beijing (all districts), 1926–1938.

Table

Year	Population	Number of births	Number of infant deaths	IMR(‰)	Number of maternal deaths	MMR(‰)
1926	51,189	1,277	234	183.2	15	11.8
1927	51,189	1,372	242	176.4	9	6.6
1928	97,877	781	154	197.2	10	12.8
1929	97,877	1,760	304	172.7	21	11.9
1930	106,574	1,842	262	142.2	12	6.5
1931	111,396	1,866	355	190.3	17	9.1
1932	117,941	2,494	447	179.2	16	6.4
1933	116,954	2,787	373	133.8	21	7.5
1934	120,680	2,836	358	126.2	19	6.7
1935	123,490	2,900	288	99.3	25	8.6
1936	120,491	2,901	433	149.3	15	5.2
1937	119,020	2,819	389	138.0	11	3.9

1. Source: Beijingshi weishengju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1938).

2. The statistics here are drawn from the summarized vital report that was published in 1938, covering information from 1926 to 1937. The summarized report recorded that the number of births in 1932 was 2492. But in the original vital table of 1932 (published in 1933), the birth number was 2494. It might be an error made by the composers when copying data from the 1933 publication to the 1938 publication. Here we use the number recorded in the original report of 1932.

3. The number of births of 1928 was exceptionally low because the collection of birth statistics was disordered during the reorganization of the district in this year.

Table

	Qinghe town			Beijing
Year	Number of births	Number of infant deaths	IMR(‰)	Number of births	Number of infant deaths	IMR(‰)	Number of maternal deaths	MMR(‰)
1931	93	24	258.1
1932	81	15	185.2
1933	98	21	214.3
1934				22,184	3,770	170	378	17.0
1938				24,657	4,538	184	235	9.5

Source: Li (1935, p.20, p. 23); Beipingshi weishengju (1935, p. 17); Beijing tebieshi weishengju (1939, table 21 and 22).

Table

	Physicians and new style midwives		Traditional midwives (all)		Traditional midwives (trained)		Traditional midwives (untrained)		Others		Unknown		Total
Year	Number of births	%	Number of births	%	Number of births	%	Number of births	%	Number of births	%	Number of births	%	Number of births
1926	218	17.1	693	54.3					330	25.8	36	2.8	1,277
1927	238	17.4	777	56.6					342	24.9	15	1.1	1,372
1928	171	21.9	433	55.5					176	22.5	1	0.1	781
1929	430	24.4	880	50.0					450	25.6	0	0.0	1,760
1930	553	30.0	753	40.9					536	29.1	0	0.0	1,842
1931	716	38.4	771	41.3					375	20.1	4	0.2	1,866
1932	833	33.4	1,060	42.5	708	28.4	352	14.1	601	24.1	0	0.0	2,494
1933	934	33.5	1,232	44.2	1,042	37.4	190	6.8	621	22.3	0	0.0	2,787
1934	1,228	43.3	1,092	38.5	947	33.4	145	5.1	516	18.2	0	0.0	2,836
1935	1,288	44.4	1,050	36.2	896	30.9	154	5.3	562	19.4	0	0.0	2,900
1936	1,404	48.4	880	30.3	709	24.4	171	5.9	617	21.3	0	0.0	2,901
1937	1,101	39.0	1,036	36.8	748	26.6	288	10.2	682	24.2	0	0.0	2,819
Average		35.6		41.6						22.6		0.2

1. Source: Beijingshi weishengju diyi weishengqu shiwusuo (1938, p. 8).

2. It was not until 1932 that statistics of infants delivered by trained and untrained traditional midwives were recorded separately.

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