MATERNAL AND CHILD CARE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27147, 17 September 1953, Page 8

MATERNAL AND CHILD CARE

PROGRESS IN WEST PACIFIC AREA

AID BY WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION

Dr. Elizabeth Wilmot is adviser on maternal and child health for the Western Pacific region of the World Health Organisation. This region embraces Korea, Japan, Formosa, Hong Kong, Indo-China, the Philippines, Singapdre and Malaya, Sarawak and North Borneo, New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, and the islands of the Pacific, she explained in Christchurch last evening. Her headquarters are at Manila.

The World Health Organisation entered a country only at the invitation of its ministry of health, and then only to help the nationals to develop their own organisation. Dr. Wilmot said.

Maternal and child health projects had been launched in Formosa, Cambodia, and Hong Kong, she said. In each a woman medical officer and two specialist nurses had been demonstrating to their counterparts modern schemes of training and. operation in maternal and child health services. This work in Japan w|s being assisted by sending in two short-term consultants and providing fellowships for Japanese personnel to study abroad. A demonstration project in the Philippines had now been completed, and the nationals were carrying on alone very successfully. Financial Co-operation

Dr. Wilmot said that for every £ contributed by the World Health Organisation the government concerned was expected to provide equal finance, so that services could be maintained

when outside assistance was withdrawn. On an average, this assistance was planned to cover three to five years. Usually advice was concentrated at the centres for efficiency, and the trained officers brought from the districts then returned to consider improvements in their own areas. Maternal and child health services might cover midwifery, pre-natal, post-natal and premature infapt care, infant, pre-school, and school health, care of handicapped children, and hospital services for children, Dr. Wilmot said. In some of the countries in her region much of this work was done in the home, so a great deal of training was directed to the midwives and pub-

lic health nurses, who were called upon to do so much visiting. Throughout the advisory services, health education was fostered to encourage good ’standards of living. So far, Australia and New Zealand had asked the World Health Organisation only for fellowships to give overseas experience to doctors and nurses. Dr. Wilmot said. New Zealand was

contributing materially to the work of the organisation by accepting overseas visitors for post-graduate training and experience in the fields of public health and dental nursing. “Experience in New Zealand is valued highly because of its over-all pattern with all branches of health work interlocking,’’ Dr. Wilmot said. “Public health nurses in New. Zealand are considered to do an excellent job by their home visiting and followup services, so that they really know the state* of health of the people in their communities, and thus gain firsthand knowledge of the needs of mothers and children. They are also widely known for being resourceful. Dental Nursing System “The value of your dental nursing has been proved here, and already the pattern has been copied in Malaya, where an excellent school dental service is being established with a school for training local dental nurses,” Dr. Wilmot said.

In New Zealand, Dr. Wilmot is visiting places where fellowships of the World Health Organisation are tenable, and is discussing with administrators the ability of the Dominion to provide other nationals with training and experience. Already further assistance had been promised by the Cornwell Hospital in Auckland, the Post-graduate Nursing School and the Dental Nursing School in Wellington, the Plunket and Karitane Training School in Dunedin, and the Preventive Medicine Clinic of the University of Otago, Dr. Wilmot said. In Christchurch she was anxious to study possible help from organisations for handicapped children—the deaf in particular—deprived and delinquent children, maternity services, and health education:

Dr. Wilmot is an Australian. Before taking up her present appointment last December, she was Assistant Director of Maternal and Child Health Services in Victoria. She recently visited Sydney for a World Health Organisation seminar on mental health in childhood.