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17
Notification of Births Act.
This useful Act was passed to provide for early notification
of births to the Medical Officer of Health, and thus avoid the delay
which arose through late registration. In avoiding this delay,
health authorities have been furnished with a valuable means for
dealing with infant mortality. As will be seen on referring to the
table on page 16, more than half the deaths of infants occur
during the earlier weeks of life and as up to the passing of this
Act of Parliament the period within which the birth of a child
could be registered was 42 days, early information which might
have been useful in preventing the deaths of many children in
the early weeks of their existence, was not obtainable. The Act
came into force in this Borough in March, 1908, and has consequently
been in operation for nearly three years, and provides that the
birth of every child shall be notified to the Medical Officer of Health
within 36 hours. The notification is " in addition to and not in
substitution for the requirements of any Act relating to the registration
of births" and applies to any child born " after the expiration
of the twenty-eighth week of pregnancy whether alive or
dead." In default of notification a penalty of 20s. is imposed.
The results of the working of the Act in Battersea during the
past 3 years have shown that as a factor in the reduction of infant
mortality it has fully justified its adoption. During 1910, 3,012
notifications of births were received. Of this number 1,094 (i.e., 36
per cent.) were notified by medical practitioners,899 (i.e. 30 per cent.)
by mid-wives and 1,019 (i.e. 34 per cent) by other persons. The
number of births notified from each of the registration sub-districts
of the Borough was as follows :—
East Battersea 467
North-West Battersea 972
South-West Battersea 573
The number of births registered during 1910 in Battersea was
4,288. The proportion of notified to registered births was therefore
70 per cent.
Of the total number (3,012) of births notified during the year,
1,316 were visited by the Council's Health Visitors. In addition
1,396 revisits have been made and the Health Visitors of the Battersea
Voluntary Health Society have also paid a large number of
visits to notified births. Most of the latter have been revisits
following on the first visit by the Council's Health Visitor, and in
this way it has been possible to keep a considerable number of
children under observation for the entire period of their first year
of life. The value of this work is from the educational standpoint
inestimable and forms in my opinion a most useful feature of the
Council's Public Health work.