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38
I should find it hard, as would Mi. James, to give you definite
reasons for this satisfactory state of progress. We would suggest,
however, that changes in diet and the absence of sweets in quantity
are largely responsible. I, personally, would add one further
suggestion—the children who are being seen as school entrants
to-day are the children who have been looked after by Maternity
and Child Welfare during the past 5 years, that is, during 4½ years
of war. They have been looked after not at nursery schools, not
in any large number in war time nurseries, but in their own homes
by Health Visitors, and also by attendance at welfare clinics.
They are children whose diet has been regulated largely by the
Ministry of Food in consultation and with the advice of the Ministry
of Health.
The Members of the Committee will be aware that for every
child under 5 there is provided a special ration of milk, orange
juice and vitamin D in the form of codliver oil at reduced cost,
or even free, and there has been considerable propaganda to drive
home to mothers and fathers that if their children are to be healthy,
these food or vitamin supplements are absolutely essential, in
a wiser diet, in more regular meals, and in the regular taking of
these vitamins may lie the cause of the improvement we have
found in the teeth of children aged 5 years.
The Committee will realise that in a comprehensive report
of this description I am indebted to the Assistant Medical Officers
for much of the information that is set out therein. My remarks
on children suffering from crippling defects are based on a report
submitted to me by Dr. Mayes. Throughout the course of the
year she has made these children her especial care. She has not
only followed them to hospital, but she has visited them in their
homes and secured that they have had every facility to enable
them to make as complete a recovery as their condition will allow.
Dr. Butler has presented me with a report on children found
to be suffering from abnormalities of the heart. Her very careful
survey of these children has enabled me to increase the activities
of some children who have made a complete recovery and to regulate
the life of others who need especial care.
The Committee will know that the care of the physically or
mentally defective child has always been a problem in which I
have taken a particular interest and the assistance of both Dr.
Mayes and Dr. Butler has been very helpful in this direction.
The same remarks apply to Dr. Rivlin, to whose work I have referred
in particular in another part of this report.
During the course of the year we lost the services of Mrs.