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116
Report of the Medical Officer of Health.
Infant Visiting.
During the year the female Sanitary Inspectors have continued
the work begun in 1905 in visiting the homes where births
had occurred, and they have also had during the year, as is stated
in their report, valuable assistance from several voluntary health
visitors.
"We herewith submit to you the report of visits among the
newly-born infants in the Borough during the year 1913.
We have had the help of four voluntary workers who have
worked on three or four mornings during the week, and who came
regularly for three months each.
They have given their services in order to qualify themselves
for a health visitor's appointment, and with their assistance we
have been able to pay more visits and cover a larger area, so that
now practically every mother in the poorer districts of the Borough
is visited once or twice while the infant is under six months of age.
After the completion of their three months' training two of our
workers returned and did occasional work in the Borough.
The total number of visits paid, including re-visits, and ineffectual
visits, was 7,135. The number of first, visits paid totalled
3,772, there were 2,030 second visits, and the number of ineffectual
visits was 1,333, the percentage of these latter being highest in
Springfield Ward and lowest in Streatham. The reason why this
is the case in Springfield is that so many mothers go out to work
that we have to go several times before an effectual visit is paid.
Among the infants we visited 114 died, their ages at death being
shown in Table LX.
53 of these occurred from Diarrhœa and Enteritis, the greatest
number being in Southfield and Tooting Wards, and it will be noted
that the greatest mortality occurred between two and three months
of age.