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65
It is clear therefore that environment, in this as in other causes of
infant mortality, plays an important part, and that unfavourable
meteorological conditions, such as those which so remarkably
characterised the summer of 1911, are only to be regarded with
apprehension in those urban districts where, owing to poverty and
its attendant evils, e.g., insufficient housing accommodation,
absence of facilities for proper storage of food, lack of early medical
attendance and efficient nursing, &c., summer diarrhoea is prone
to attack a susceptible population.
The disease is largely preventable and it is evident that the
steps which are at present being taken are inadequate to guard
against outbreaks, especially in epidemic years. It would be
very desirable to provide by means of a temporary system of
notification, information of the incidence of summer diarrhoea and
in suitable cases facilities for the removal to hospital of the patient.
Much good work has been done in Battersea as in other
districts by the measures at present being carried out by the
sanitary authority, but these measures are hampered through
lack of early information of the incidence of the disease and of
provision for the proper treatment of the little sufferers while
there is yet time to save them.
The Local Government Board issued the following memorandum
to sanitary authorities, dated 18th August, 1911, on " Prevalence
of Summer Diarrhoea Amongst Children."
The Local Government Board have had under their consideration the
excessive child mortality, especially from diarrhoea and enteritis, which is
accompanying the very hot and dry summer of the present year. They
realise that some excess of mortality over that occurring in cool and wet
summers is inevitable ; but they desire to impress upon the Council the importance
of taking such special steps as are practicable with a view to minimising
the excess.
The Board are aware that in a large number of sanitary districts special
efforts are made each summer to remove the nuisances and other conditions
which favour excessive mortality amongst children. They suggest the
following lines along which it is most important that action should be taken,
but they do not wish it to be understood that this advice covers the entire
ground or that it does not need to be supplemented by action directed towards
the special needs of individual districts.
Firstly, it is important that exact advice should be given as to the
feeding and management of children, and more generally as to preventing the
exposure of their food to contamination from decomposing organic matter.
This distribution of clearly worded leaflets is useful in this connection : but
even more important are personal visits and the offer of practical advice to the
mothers of babies born within the last twelve months. Exact and simple
instructions are most likely to be followed if given during a period of special
danger. In districts and towns in which the Notification of Births Act has
been adopted, the records obtained under that Act will give valuable information
in selecting the, homes to which visits are now most urgently required.