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34
The preventive measures that are more concerned with personal
hygiene than the hygiene of environment have been explained in
previous Annual Reports. The most important work of this kind is a
comprehensive system of health visiting, working on the information
furnished by the Notification of Births Acts, 1907. This Act, which
provides that all births shall be notified to the Medical Officer of
Health within 36 hours of their occurence, is essential to the effective
operation of any scheme of health-visiting on a large scale.
The Notification of Births Act came into operation in Hampstead
in March, 1908, and the year 1911 is the third for which we possess a
complete annual record of the working of the Act. The number of births
notified in 1911 was 1131, including 25 still-births, the number of livebirths
notified being 1106. The total number of live-births occurring in
Hampstead in 1911 was 1199, so that the number of live-births notified
formed 92.2 per cent, of the number that actually occurred. 265 births
were notified by medical practitioners, 131 by midwives, 689 by parents
and 46 from other sources. The proportion of births notified in
Hampstead is high—considerably higher than in most other districts.
The obligation to notify imposed by the Act is in addition to, and
not in substitution for, the obligation to register a birth which is imposed
by the Registration Act. The notification must be made within 36 hours
of the birth, while registration may be delayed for as long as six weeks
after and is inadequate to supply the timely information necessary for
effective health-visiting. In Hampstead a system of health-visiting under
the Act is carried out on well-defined lines by the Council's lady
sanitary inspectors, and by a body of voluntary visitors organised by
the Hampstead Health Society. This system has been described in
previous Annual Reports but it may be useful to repeat the description.
The first visit is paid by one of the lady inspectors, the voluntary visitors
are responsible for subsequent visits, and the infants are kept under
supervision during the whole of the first year of life. Periodical meetings
of the visitors are held, where cases are discussed and future work
arranged. The mothers are encouraged to bring their babies regularly
to be weighed. The baby-weighing takes place once a week at St.
Stephen's Rooms, Pond Street, and at the Brondesbury and West
Hampstead Day Nursery, 36, Hemstal Road. The weighing is carried
out by the lady inspectors, assisted by the voluntary visitors, and, at