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127
Several improvements were made during the year. An
additional Health Visitor was provided to assist at the Ante-Natal
Clinics. Her appointment has allowed the Lady Medical Officer
to give more time to the medical and obstetrical examination of
the cases.
Buist's pads were applied to cases of posterior positions at 38
weeks throughout the year. During 1935 this treatment will not
be given, and the results of the two years will be compared.
A large proportion of expectant mothers now books in the
third or fourth month of pregnancy and is supervised during the
remainder of the time. Of the large number of cases referred for
dental treatment early in pregnancy the Dental Department was
not able to deal with more than half owing to other demands on
its services.
The prevention of breech presentation was highly successful,
and the infant mortality rate for cases treated by version happened
to be lower than that for vertex cases that had not had version
performed.
Early in the year a Masseuse was appointed to St. Mary's
Maternity Hospital to give the lying-in mothers daily exercises,
so that now all the In-patients treated by the service receive this
benefit.
The number of patients delivered in Mayday Hospital
showed an increase of 24 per cent. on the total for 1933, and the
strain on maternity accommodation, inadequate from the first, is
now excessive. The number of cases delivered of viable babies in
Mayday Hospital, with 22 beds, was 515. The number delivered
in St. Mary's Maternity Hospital, with 30 beds, was 562.
The other great deficiency in the service is that of a Mothercraft
Class, run by trained mothercraft workers. A small
Mothers' Club, organised by voluntary helpers, has been started.
It provides sewing classes that partly remedy this deficiency.
These notes would not be complete without recording a
special debt of gratitude to the British Red Cross Society, who
supplied a large number of the blood donors used for the 14 blood
transfusions performed during the year.