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49
Attendances at Infant Welfare Clinics.
Number of General Clinics held during the year 297
Number of individual children who attended the
Clinics 3,227
Total number of attendances 18,612
Number of medical consultations at General Clinics 7,473
Number of medical consultations at Special Clinics 544
The daily average attendances at the Clinics was as
follows:—
White House, Monday afternoon 64
Manor Park, Tuesday morning 54
North Woolwich, Tuesday afternoon 17
Masterman Road, Wednesday afternoon 71
White House, Thursday morning; 36
White House, Thursday afternoon 71
White House, Friday afternoon 73
White House, Special Clinics 16
At the Clinics special attention is paid to the education of
mothers, individual instruction is given in general hygiene of
childhood, correct methods of feeding and management of children.
Mothers are encouraged to bring their children for
periodical medical examination so that any deviation from the
normal physiological state has a chance of being detected early, so
that defects and incipient disease can be treated in the early stages.
Preventive centres are not dispensaries for the treatment of
sick children, but seek to maintain the health of the healthy child,
and to afford guidance towards its normal and successful upbringing.
Yet, while this is so, many departures from the normal
are discovered at the medical examination of children, and such
cases, medical or surgical, are referred to their own doctor for
treatment, or to hospitals or dispensaries suitable for their conditions.
Simple ailments of infancy in children attending the
Centres are treated at the morning Clinics at the White House.
Children under the age of five are frequently referred to the
Infant Welfare Clinics by the Tuberculosis Nurses from homes
in which tuberculosis has occurred, for examination as contacts
by the Medical Officer, and observation, if desirable, at the Clinics
themselves.