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14
at the Town Hall on Friday, October 6th, the following resolution
was passed :—
" That the Poplar Health Visiting Association should
approach the Public Health Committee with a view of asking
them to make a recommendation to the Borough Council to
appoint a Health Visitor to do similar work to that being
done now by Miss Guest, who is leaving in December, and
that the Public Health Committee be asked to receive a
deputation lrom the Association."
The Public Health Visiting Association for the last ten months
has been able to place at the disposal of the Health Committee the
services of a qualified and trained lady visitor (Miss D. Guest) who
has been paid at the rate of £100 a year.
The Public Health Visiting Association has done its best to
make the arrangement a permanent one, but it has failed, and the
valuable work must come to an end after next month unless the
Council are willing to take it up.
In Miss Hall the Council has a most capable organiser of
health visiting, but in so large an area she needs assistance if all
the ground is to be properly covered.
The infant death rate for the Borough of Poplar in 1910 was
119 per thousand births, as compared with 112 per thousand in
Stepney, a very similar district.
The rate of mortality of infants visited by the Health Visitor and
the Public Health Visiting Association was 98 per thousand. See
pages 12 and 289 Dr. Alexander's Report. (Annual Report, 1910.)
Such a startling reduction in the death rate speaks for itself,
and needs no words to emphasise the invaluable nature of the work
done.
How urgent the matter is becomes clear when we remember
that a heavy death rate among infants entails a heavy rate of
inefficiency and disease among the children who grow up, and our
experience in the last three years shows clearly that the systematic
visiting of mothers and infants in their own homes by qualified
visitors brings its reward in the gratifying reduction of the infant
death rate as shown.