Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Lord President of the Council to consider the working of the Midwives Act, 1902.

  • Great Britain. Midwives Act Committee.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Departmental Committee appointed by the Lord President of the Council to consider the working of the Midwives Act, 1902. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    (6) Prematurely-born Children. The Rule of the Central Midwives Board, requiring midwives to ask for medical aid in cases of dangerous feebleness of the child, might be strengthened by the insertion of an explicit reference to premature births. (7) Ophthalmia neonatorum. (i) The Board _ should also prescribe that medical help should be summoned whenever_ a midwife notices symptoms in the mother or child indicating any risk of ophthalmia neonatorum. (ii) This disease might with advantage be made notifiable under the Infectious Disease (Notification) Acts by inclusion in the list of the diseases specified in section 6 of the Act of 1889. (8) Notification of Births Act. The general adoption of the Notification of Births Act, 1907, throughout the kingdom is recommended as a valuable supplement to the operation of the Midwives Act. Failing this, the addition of a column in the Register of Births, for entry of the name and status of the person who actually delivered the mother, would probably help to promote efficiency and check abuses in the practice of midwives. It would be desirable that such particulars should be required in all notifications imder the Act of 1907, and, if necessary, the Act should be amended in this sense. (9) Still-hiHhs. Statutory provision should be made for the registration of still-births. (10) hiquiries hy the Local Government Board into the effects and working of the Act. (i) The medical staff of the Local Government Board might with advantage investi- gate the relation between the administration of the Act and the rate of puerperal mortality in different areas. (ii) The Committee also suggest that the working of the Act should be reported upon whenever a special inquiry into the general sanitary condition of any district is instituted by the Department. (II) Minor Amendments of the Act. (i) It should be made the duty of the Central Midwives Board to present to the Privy Council an annual report of their proceedings. (ii) The medical officers of counties and county boroughs should be required to report annually to their authorities on the administration of the Act in their areas ; copies of these reports should be forwarded to the Privy Council, the Local Govern- ment Board, and the Central Midwives Board, who should include a digest in their own report. (iii) Midwives should be supplied with stamped forms for all notifications which they are, or may be, required to make to the local supervising authorities or the Central Midwives Board, and any books prescribed for their use should be provided gratuitously by the authority. (iv) For the purposes of section 3 of the Act, the General Medical Council should be empowered to act through their Executive Committee, instead of through the English Branch Council. v.—Conclusion. 112. The Committee believe that, if these recommendations, none of which present any considerable difficulty, are adopted in a spirit of sympathy with the objects of the Act, they will go far to dissipate the prejudice that attaches to it in certain quarters, and materially reduce any obstacles to its operative success, now attributable to lack of information, obscurity of purpose, or administrative apathy.
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