[Report 1927] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council.

  • Essex (England). County Council.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1927] / Medical Officer of Health, Essex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/122 (page 5)
    The campaign against venereal disease was well maintained during the year and it does appear that the policy of attraction and persuasion rather than compulsion in dealing with our people lias scored another success. The Child Welfare Schemes are developing satisfactorily but there are still opportunities for further safeguarding the health and lives of our mothers and children. It is hoped that in a few years every parish in the County will be served j by a trained Midwife. In the meantime the co-operation between the County Council and the County Nursing Association continues as close as ever and to the advantage of both. In a few districts Maternity Hospitals might serve a most useful purpose but our main efforts should be to ensure a safe confinement in the home. This entails a good deal of team work which is being secured with greater frequency. Ante-Natal care is gradually being recognised as the normal and proper procedure and not an indication of impending calamity, just as in the early days of Baby Clinics some mothers objected to baby weighing because they associated such practice with malnutrition and wasting. Some method is needed to secure the assistance of an obstetric specialist not merely for puerperal fever and puerperal pyrexia, but for the other complications and accidents of pregnancy and confinement. The most urgent step that should be taken at the present time is to secure more effective supervision of children from two to five years of age. The existing 52 Welfare Centres look after the mothers and their babies very wrell up to about 18 months after the bii'th of the child. It is not sufficiently realised that from that time up to the commencement of school age is the most vital period of a child’s life. It is during the second, third and fourth years of life that those defects are developing which are recorded at the first School Medical Inspection. Obviously the best time for prevention and treatment is during those years and not at 5 years as is so often the case at present. To carry out this most desirable reform the further co-operation of the Voluntary Committees of centres will be necessary and in addition some increase in the staff of Medical Officers and Health Visitors. The compulsory registration of Maternity Homes will tend to ensure that each Maternity Home will be staffed and maintained in an efficient manner. The great aim of the sanitary service is cleanliness: clean air, clean water, clean food, clean homes, clean persons, clean towns and villages. Clean water is available for most parts of the County and in fact its existence is now generally assumed as a matter of course, but constant vigilance is necessary in safeguarding this prime source of health and well-being. Clean rivers have a more direct bearing on public water supplies now that Southend, Chelmsford, and South Essex are going to the rivers for their water supplies. Clean food is essential for proper nutritiou and health and in this respect meat and milk are leading the way which will be followed by others. It would seem an