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149
notifications of birth are sent to the Medical Officer of Health
concerned, and in the same way notifications from other
Medical Officers of Health reach this Department.
(b) The Work of the Health Visitors. No change has taken
place in the personnel of the Health Visitors during the year.
Their duties comprise the visiting of births and of children
under school age in the district needing this attention; the
visiting of expectant mothers who have attended at an antenatal
centre or to whom visits are desirable; enquiry into still
births and the deaths of young children; and attendance at
the centre to the women and children including those whom
she visits in the homes who come for medical and surgical advice.
The supervision of all children under school age in the district
includes the visiting of cases of ophthalmia neonatorum,
measles, zymotic enteritis, pneumonia and anterior poliomyelitis
(infantile paralysis).
Arrangements have been made whereby, so far as is practicable,
the health visitor attends at the centre which is most
convenient to the women residing in her district. It is not
many years ago since the health visitors' visits were misunderstood
and in many cases unwelcomed; nowadays this has
changed and mothers now expect the health visitors to call,
and feel disappointed if they do not.
In the first four years of the quinquennium the number of
visits paid by the health visitors was as follows:—1921,16,836;
1922, 18,152; 1923, 21,073; 1924, 22,148.
The following table shows the classification of visits paid
by the health visitors in 1925:—