CHILD WELFARE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27387, 12 May 1950, Page 2

CHILD WELFARE

NOTES FOR WOMEN

Philippines Visitor To Study Plunket System

Because New Zealand has the lowest infant mortality in the world, Mrs Maria P. Velono, of Manila, in the Philippines, has been sent here by the United Nations International Children’s. Emergency Fund and the Philippine Government to study maternal and child welfare in this country. Mrs Velono, who is Nurse Superior at Large in the Philippines, is at present studying methods of infant feeding at the Truby King-Harris Hospital, Anderson’s Bay. She intends to stay in Dunedin for four months, and will devote another four months to visiting other centres in New Zealand.

“ The Philippine Islands,” Mrs Velono said, “ have a population of 19,000,000 people. Unfortunately, they have also a very high infant mortality rate. In 1948 it was 114 for every 1000 live births; last year there was a slight improvement to 108 per 1000 births. It may not, however, be quite so bad as it looks, because, though births are required by law to be registered, mothers, not having the incentives of the family benefit to urge them, often do not register their babies, whilst deaths are all registered.” The high mortality is largely caused by infantile beri-beri, a deficiency disease due to a lack of vitamin B in the diet. Philippine people eat a great deal of highly polished rice; the adults suffer from forms of beri-beri, as well as tuberculosis and malaria. In an effort to overcome this “ No. 1 killer of young babies,” a honey-like syrup bad now been made from rice bran and was given daily to the babies, Mrs Velono said. With plenty of citrus fruits and sunshine available, there was no lack of either vitamin C or D. “ The trouble here, so far as I have been able to see,” said Mrs Velono,

“ seems to be to establish breast feed T ing. In the Philippines, it is quite different; mothers always feed their babies, sometimes for as long as two years, and we are trying to start mixed feeding at an earlier age.” Conditions here were in many ways quite different, Mrs Velono emphasised. The climate in the Philippines was so warm that babies needed only a napkin and one garment. Food was different, and there was a shortage of nurses. It would probably not be possible to. establish the Plunket clinic system, which had proved so valuable in New Zealand, because of this shortage, but Mrs Velono said she was anxious to> see as much as possible in order to find some measures which could be transferred to her own country. The Philippines were very badly hit by the war, but now industries and homes were slowly being reconstructed. Child welfare programmes had been instituted by the United Nations, and scientific feeding experiments are being carried out on selected groups to study the influence of a reinforced diet on the health of the people.