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24
MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE
SERVICES.
During the year the Maternity and Child Welfare
Centres have been entrusted to the Assistant Medical
Officers with the help of a part-time Medical Officer for
those clinics which so overlapped as to prevent their being
conducted by one of the Assistant Medical Officers. As
the same Assistant Medical Officer sees the mothers at the
Ante-natal Clinics and subsequently at the Infant Welfare
Clinics, there is continuity of advice throughout, and, what
is perhaps of more importance, that personal contact,
which engenders the confidence of the mothers in the
advice they receive, is maintained.
There is a regrettable tendency upon the part of mothers
not to breast feed their children and possible explanations,
if not indeed excuses, are to be found in undernourishment
generally and the necessity to go to work. To counteract
this tendency, which in the main is not due to unwillingness on the part of the mother, milk, cod liver oil, iron
and calcium are provided free in necessitous oases and at
a low economic cost in other cases, but this does not take,
the place of a good mixed diet.
Consideration is now being given to the possibility of
establishing a specific Breast Feeding Clinic in the hope
that mothers will be encouraged and assisted to continue
breast feeding and be educated in re-establishing failing
lactation. From the vital, national and even economic
point of view it would be more advantageous in general for
mothers to breast-feed their infants rather than return too
early to work which necessitates their children being
placed upon artificial feeding.
Infant Mortality.
It is regretted that the mortality of infants under one
year has increased from 60 to 68 per 1,000. It is all the
more to be deplored since the rate for the whole of
London has been reduced from 66 to 60. In some of the