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73
8. The education of the woman herself and of the general
public should constantly be borne in mind by all concerned with
maternal welfare as the whole-hearted co-operation of mothers is
essential to the success of any measure designed to reduce maternal
mortality.
This is done both at the clinics and at the time of home
visiting.
9. The service of home helps should, wherever practicable,
be provided.
Home helps are provided to necessitous cases.
10. Adequate records should be kept in connection with every
branch of maternity service. Free interchange of such records
between all professionally concerned is essential in order to secure
continuity of supervision and treatment.
Reports are issued by the clinic medical officers to those
who will be attending the mother at her confinement.
11. Arrangements should be made in every district to ensure
that no expectant or nursing mother requiring extra nourishment
on health grounds fails to receive it for such period as may be
necessary.
This question was linked up with the consideration of
Circular 1519 which drew attention to the first report of the
Advisory Committee on Nutrition when the following report
was submitted, dealing more particularly with the nourishment
of expectant and nursing mothers :
In some districts meals are provided at food kitchens.
One advantage of such an arrangement is the certainty that
the food is consumed by the mothers and not by other
members of the family. Owing to the size of the district
and the very small numbers of expectant mothers in receipt
of milk such an arrangement would not prove a satisfactory
solution.
An alternative method is to issue vouchers to be handed
in at certain restaurants with which arrangements had been
made. It is questionable whether this procedure would be
popular even if practicable.
According to the First Report of the Advisory Committee
on Nutrition from the health standard there is no
other single measure which would do more to improve the
health, development and resistance to disease of the rising
generation than a largely increased consumption of safe
milk by mothers, children and adolescents—a recommendation
being made that the average daily consumption of
milk per head should be about two pints for expectant and
nursing mothers, from one to two pints for children and
not less than half a pint for the rest of the population.