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THE HEALTH OF BARKING
The special nursery for premature babies.
much delay the tap was repaired and after this he had nothing but trouble ! In
your nursery special care is taken to ensure that the atmosphere is kept moist and
warmed.
Where possible, we like to take the mother into hospital too. This helps with
the feeding and is nowadays regarded as the best possible scheme. Sometimes it
is necessary, if life is to be saved, for the child to be rushed to hospital immediately
after birth. In these cases the ambulance carries a specially heated cot and other
equipment,-including a supply of oxygen, and a nurse travels with the child to hospital.
The children are carefully followed up after their discharge from hospital by
your Health Visitors, because the high death rate in premature infants remains a
threat throughout the whole of the first year of life.
Broncho-pneumonia. As you have seen, pneumonia is a very serious cause of
death in infants, causing 21% of all these deaths in 1946.
There are special types of pneumonia which are peculiar to the first month of
life. The chief of these usually affects lungs which, as a result of birth stress, have
not fully opened up with air (atelectasis), so that good handling during birth seems
the best line in preventing death from this cause.
Nevertheless, the bulk of these pneumonia cases in the first year of life are due
to what we call an autogenous infection, that is the germ is present in the throat of
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