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MATERNITY AND CHILD WELFARE
The Senior Assistant Medical Officer (Dr Helen Campbell)
reports :—
Notification of Births
The birth rate for 1935 was 155, being a decrease of 1
compared with the rate for 1934
The total number of notified births was 5,3,14, of which
number there were 5,158 live births and 156 still births
Births notified by doctors and parents 1069
Births notified by midwives 4245
Number of births in the Borough in the last five years (net
number of births of West Ham Residents) :
1931 1932 1933 1934 1935
5266 4980 4406 4470 4200
Health Visiting
The Council employs eighteen fulltime Health Visitors who
undertake the routine home visiting of mothers and young
children: by arrangement between the Medical Officer of Health's
Department and the Committee of the Plaistow Maternity
Hospital the majority of those children, born in that hospital or
attended at birth by nurses from that Association, are visited
until 4 years of age by the nurses from that Association : at present
there are thirtyone such nurses employed in health visiting In
addition home visiting is carried out in special cases attending
the Clinics by the Superintendent Nurses of the various voluntary
centres in the Borough
There has been no alteration in the routine visiting of infants
and children up to school age : from birth until 2 years the child
is visited at least once a quarter, thereafter until it goes to school,
at intervals of six months Premature and weakly infants are
visited monthly or more often according to the condition of the
child In addition, the Municipal Health Visitors undertake all the
duties of Infant Life Protection Visitors under the Children and
Young Persons' Act, 1932 They also investigate all deaths of
infants and young children, stillbirths, and cases of puerperal
pyrexia or fever, ophthalmia and pemphigus neonatorum
Many visits are paid to the homes of expectant mothers, who
are thereby brought into touch with the several sources by which
they can obtain help, viz antenatal supervision at Clinics, including
Dental treatment, Home Help Scheme, the provision of dried
milk at and after six months of pregnancy, provision of free
meals (since January, 1936), and hospital facilities for confinement
in cases where such help is indicated
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