View report page

11
have been supplied with varying amounts (according to the
nature of the ease) of free milk. When the average has been
6s., families have had to pay an amount proportionate to their
means, and with few exceptions no families have been supplied
with milk at a reduced price where the average income per
week exceeded 10s. per head.
All applications are still considered by a special Milk SubCommittee
which meets once a month to deal with fresh
applications and to review all existing cases with a view to
recommending their continuation, alteration, or withdrawal.
There are two INFANT CONSULTATION CENTRES
situated in the two extreme ends of the District, one being held
at the Iron Room, St. Saviour's Church, Grand Drive, Raynes
Park, and the other at the Mission Hall, Pincott Road, Merton.
These meetings are held on alternate weeks.
During the year there has been an average attendance of
37 per week.
This important branch of Public Health Work is continually
increasing, and the results already achieved are most
gratifying, not in this District only, but over the whole
country.
The steady fall in the Infant Mortality Rate is a most
satisfactory feature, and almost entirely due to the interest and
care that have of late years been focussed on the saving of
Infant life. This work, which belongs largely to the realm of
preventive medicine is the more valuable in that it tends to
enable the infant to develop into a healthy child, and to avoid
the appearance of a hopeless cripple and the type of child
that is too often a charge to the community for the rest of his
or her life.
I should like to draw special attention to the Infant
Mortality figure for the year under review, which was 26.3.