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32
The preventive measures that are more concerned with personal
hygiene than the hygiene of environment have been continued
during the past year. 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, by which Act all
births are required to be notified to the Medical Officer of Health
within 36 hours of their occurence. 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 of Births Act came into operation in Hampstead
in March, 1908, and the year 1912 is the fourth for which we possess a
complete annual record of the working of the Act. The number of births
notified in 1912 was 1199, including 28 still-births, the number of livebirths
notified being 1171. The total number of live-births occurring in
Hampstead in 1912 was 1230, so that the number of live-births notified
formed 95.2 per cent. of the number that actually occurred. 274 births
were notified by medical practitioners, 157 by midwives, 701 by parents
and 63 from other sources. The proportion of births notified in
Hampstead is high—considerably higher than in most other districts.
Of the births notified to the Medical Officer of Health a certain
number were selected, upwards of 800 (about 70 per cent.) to visit.
The first visit is paid by the Inspector, who, while chatting to and
advising the mother, is able to judge of the general homo conditions
of the family. Informal inspection of the house generally follows,
and obvious sanitary defects are reported to the Medical Officer of
Health.
The mother is invited to bring her baby to one or other of the
weighing rooms where the Inspector attends weekly, assisted by one
or more voluntary visitors.
The Inspector attends Infant Committees (East and West) of the
Health Society, and gives the names and particulars of these infants
which she considers need befriending and visiting by the voluntary
visitors. At these Committee meetings the voluntary visitors report
any conditions inimical to the welfare of those cases which they visit.