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83
has been particularly noticed by your women sanitary inspectors
during their visits to selected homes.
Furthermore, during the year we have had the advantage
of receiving notifications of births from the local registrars, and
we shall probably in the future follow the example of other
boroughs in adopting the "Notification of Births Act," which
will be of the greatest possible value in obtaining early information,
and enable visits to be made to selected homes within a
reasonable time of birth, before irreparable damage has been
done through ignorance.
The Act referred to is an adoptive one, which your Public
Health Committee recommended should be applied to this
Borough. Your Council, however, decided to postpone the
consideration of the same.
I am in a position to state that the objections which
were raised in many districts have been surmounted, and where
the Act is now in force, notifications are given by parents without
any friction.
I, therefore, seriously recommend that the question
should be re-considered at an early opportunity. From a return
obtained, 17 of the Metropolitan Boroughs have already adopted
the Act. Some of these have, I believe, appointed qualified
Health Visitors, who are doing valuable work.
In addition to the wide distribution of pamphlets on the
management of children to homes at which births were registered,
visits were made to 452 selected cases. Your inspectors report
there has been an increase in breast feeding; 355 were so
nourished, whilst 30 were fed with breast and bottle, and 67
artificially fed. Of these 452 mothers 135 followed some employment
away from home.