EMPIRE'S BEST BABIES

Taranaki Daily News, 26 August 1931, Page 5

EMPIRE'S BEST BABIES

MOMBASA WINS SHIELD..

WEIRD DIET OF EAST AFRICA.

Baby Week movement. is spreading throughout the Empire, giving the children a better chance of life and making that life infinitely happier. The latest winner of the Imperial Baby Week Challenge Shield, given to tho National Baby Week Council by the News of the World newspaper, London,, for award for the beat Baby Week held throughout the British Empire (including the United Kingdom), is the Mombasa (Kenya Colony) Health and Baby Week Council. The Challenge Shield, which is at the moment in the hands of the 1930 winner, Panadura, Ceylon, will thus take a journey overseas to its new holders.

These Baby Weeks in overseas parts follow very much the lines laid down for Baby Week in Britain, although naturally they are adapted to the special circumstances of the district concerned. The Mombasa Health and Baby Week was a very, great said important event, stirring the whole town to take an interest in child welfare. Native babies were entered for a baby show, and proved to- have reached a really good standard of development, this, perhaps, resulting from the decision that only those infants and toddlers who had been, attending maternity and child welfare centres should be eligible to compete. Babies in this part of the Empire are raised under peculiar conditions. For seven days after birth baby is fed on porridge made of fine flour of fresh rice without any sugar, and cooked in clarified butter. Fpr the next 40 days the baby is fed on flour of rice cooked into a thick porridge mixed with hard sugar or with sweet tembo, an alcoholic drink made from coooanuts. Ho is .given this as well as milk three times a day.

At the age of two- and a half years the baby is allowed to eat anything. •When an owl flies past the house In which there is a baby the child is supposed to get a disease. Ho is sometimes treated by witchcraft. For rickets parts of the chest and back are branded with a red-hot iron. For whooping cough the juice of boiled maize may bo given, and in. some parts the head is shaved. These traditions and customs help to account for tho very great number of infant deaths in Mombasa. It Is hoped that as a result of the Baby Week movement reforms Will be brought about.

This year the Health and Baby Week Committee of Parvaiipur, India, is second to Mombasa, while the Health and Baby Week Committee Matara, Ceylon, takes third place. Certificates of merit have been awarded, to the Baby Week Committees of Kingston, Jamaica, and Maida, India? ami to the Health and - Week Committees Q‘f Campbellpur, andia; Dambantota, • Ceylon;. . Sydney, and Ohingleput, . India.