OUR BABIES.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1415, 13 October 1923, Page 2

OUR BABIES.

Cliild Welfar’c: in South Africa. Miss J. B. N. Paterson, who assisted Dr. Truby King in the Health Campaign which took place last year in New Zealand, is now. at the request of the Child Welfare Societies of the Union, lecturing in South Africa. The lecturing tour is to extend over six months and will embrace the principal districts of the Union. Miss Paterson has spent a month at Capetown, giving lectures in that city and the surrounding neighbourhood to the general public, nurses, midwives (white and coloured separately), university students, school girls, and also to various associations, and to mothers. She also held drawing room meetings, and saw individual mothers and babies by appointment. When Miss Paterson wrote last she was just leaving for Johannesburg. The following account of her first public meeting in Capetown may be of interest to our readers:— TRUBY KING NURSE’S MISSION. THE CHILD WELFARE MOVEMENT That Capetown is keenly interested in matters pertaining to child welfare and health was abundantly manifest from the crowded gathering at the first public lecture by Miss J. B. N. Paterson, Truby King Nurse, given in the Banqueting Hall last night. Dr. T. Shaddick Higgins, City Medical Officer of Health, who presided, was introduced by Mrs A. McMurray (organising secretary for Child Welfare in the Union) who remarked, amid cheers, that it was a very happy circumstance that Dr. Higgins’s first public appearance since his appointment to Capetown should be in connection with child welfare and health. M.0.1I«?s A ck nouledifm cuts. “I am very pleased to have this opportunity of meeting a Capetown audience for the first time,’’ said Dr Higgins. "I would like to thank Mrs McMurray for her very kind words and the welcome she has tendered me on behalf of the Child Welfare Societies and the Child Life Protection Society. “Nurse Paterson is just now,” he continued, “beginning a tour throughout the Union of South Africa which is to last for six months. ’Phis tour is being organised by the Child Welfare Societies of the Union, and the object is to awaken or increase public interest in the extremely important subject of child welfare. Nurse Paterson is peculiarly fitted for such a task, because she is a trained nurse from Guy’s Hospital, London, and she holds the certificate of the C.M.B. (England) and she is a member of the Royal Sanitary Institute. As well as being for some time an instructor of nurses in Guy’s Hospital, she has had the wonderful opportunity of being trained by Dr. Truby King in his institution in London for this purpose. Tribute to I)r. Truby King. "I don’t know whether the name of Dr. Truby King is well-known to this audience. I can assure you that his name is very well known in London. “Dr Truby King’s work in New Zealand in promoting the system of Plunket Nurses throughout the islands of New Zealand with the object of assisting the cause of maternity and child welfare is regarded, I think, in all enlightened communities, as being something peculiarly outstanding in public health work in .our time, so much so that the infantile mortality rate throughout New Zealand amongst all classes of the population has reached a figure which is very much lower than that of any other large country in the world. “The success of his work in New Zealand has prompted people throughout the British Empire and in other parts of the world to endeavour to share in its benefits, and it is for this reason that Nurse Paterson is making this tour in South Africa. The first month is to be spent in the Cape Peninsula and the remaining five months in a tour of various parts of the Union. I wish Nurse Paterson success in this arduous undertaking. A Great Health Cqimpaigii. “This subject of child welfare is. I have no hesitation in saying, one of the most important subjects which faces the civilised races to-day.— (Hear, hear). The object is to secure that the coming generation shall be a healthy generation, physically and morally. The object of child welfare work fpich as that which Nurse Paterson is advocating is to ensure that, as far as possible, the coming generation shall be healthy, and shall not be maimed by disease. "I, m yself, in the part of London in which I worked, have seen some marvellous results accruing from work which, though not perhaps conducted on precisely the same lines as those of Dr Truby King, was carried out on very similar lines. In the borough of St. Pancras in 17 years fi orn the time in 1904 of the institution of schemes of child welfare, very largely by voluntary societies,’ the rate of infantile mortality has been better than halved. “You have to remember that, for

every child who dies as a result of evil conditions you may take it that many a child survives who is maimed and harmed for life. I am extremely impressed with the importance of the work of voluntary societies in this connection. The future of child welfare propaganda depends very largely upon public opinion. It is to arouse public opinion that the societies have secured the services of Nurse Paterson for this series of lectures in this country.”—(Cheers). Nur.se I’ateTsOn’s Lecture. Nurse Paterson, who had a cordial reception, then proceeded with her lecture, which was amply illustrated by means of lantern slides. She explained that the slides had been “sent over” by Dr Truby King. After 18 months’ association with Dr Truby King, helping him in his work and helping him in the health campaign which was conducted right throughout the Dominion of New Zealand, one had got a better insight into his work, and a better grasp of the fundamentals than one formerly had. Dr Higgins had said that a great deal of importance attached to the voluntary bodies which aroused public attention in regard to the child welfare societies and their w,ork. The New Zealand Society, which was called the Plunket Society, was a purely voluntary organisation, founded by Dr Truby King some years ago. It had grown in a really remarkable manner. Nurse Paterson dealt, with various aspects of the work of properly attending to the health and wellbeing of children, and produced facts and figures to show the splendid results which had accrued in the cities of New Zealand from the work and methods with which Dr Truby King’s name was associated. She gave some striking instances of the baneful effects of malnutrition.