M 42
A special feature of 1937 consisted in the inoculation of 1,696 mothers and older children with cholera vaccine during the serious epidemic of that disease.
Home visits formed another activity of the centres and nearly two thousand were paid by nurses to the homes of babies attending.
Voluntary helpers were all too scarce at these centres, but special mention should be made of the devoted services of Mrs. D. Cuthbertson who has now, unfortunately, left the Colony.
A description of maternal infant welfare would be incomplete without mention of the activities of the Hong Kong Eugenics League formed in April, 1936, which aims at giving advice to poor married women who have already had one or more children on how to limit and space their families.
Sessions were held weekly out of office hours at the Violet Peel Health Centre.
The number of mothers who were given advice on the spacing and limiting of their families amounted to 217. The number of pregnancies in this group was 1,142, an average of 5.3 per mother. Nearly one third of these pregnancies had ended in miscarriage, still birth or early death of the child born alive.
The average age of the mother attending the clinic was just under thirty years.
The following extract from the Report of the Eugenics League for 1937-38 is of interest:- "Before any mother is instructed in contraception full medical history is taken and careful examination performed by the doctor. By this means a number of serious diseases have been detected in their early stages. Patients have been referred to the appropriate clinics for the treatment of venereal disease, tuberculosis and other medical, surgical, obstetrical and gynaecological conditions.
VI. HOSPITALS, DISPENSARIES AND VENEREAL DISEASES CLINICS.
A list of Naval, Military, Government Civil, Chinese and private hospitals and institutions is given in Return B to this Report. On this occasion it is only proposed to mention the more salient facts in connection with the hospital and dispensary services in the Colony.