Infant Diarrhea in Finland *†

Pediatric and public health history has demonstrated a brilliant and generally successful struggle against diarrheal disease. Particularly in the twentieth century, many countries all over the world with marked variations in geography, climate, and culture have experienced a progressive and notable decline in infant mortality due to diarrhea. The extent of this decline in some areas has been more than 90 per cent in the last thirty years, so that, for example, infant mortality in New York City from all causes in 1940 was lower than the infant mortality from diarrhea alone in 1910. New York's experience is cited only because of size and relative accuracy of figures; the same picture, with only quantitative variations, has been reproduced in many other cities and many other countries. Finland was one which had experienced a progressive decline and it was therefore a matter of serious concern to Finnish public health workers and pediatricians to observe, in the decade beginning in 1940, an apparent reversal of the trend and a recurring high incidence of diarrheal disease and mortality among infants. The reversal was first observed at the outbreak of war in 1939 but continued, and even accelerated in the fall of 1944, after the end of the war. Because of this, the government of Finland requested the assistance of the World Health Organization in analyzing the problem and in making recommendations for its solution. The writer§ was asked by the Organization to visit Finland in the summer of 1950 for these purposes.