Page 254 - Bahrain Gov annual reports (V a)_Neat

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YEARLY REPORT CHILD WELFARE 1955
The Child Welfare Service was started by taking the mothers and children delivered in the
Maternity Hospital to their homes. This helped the mothers to gain confidence in the Health
Visitor and enabled the Health Visitor to appreciate the conditions under which each individual
mother lives, and the difficulties with which she is faced. As is only to be expected with a com­
pletely new service of this sort, progress has been gradual, but on the whole the co-operation
of the mothers has been good. As the work and the results of the child welfare service became
more and more widely known and as the mothers become more confident and ready to learn,
the progress of the service should become swifter and the work increasingly more effective.

Welfare Clinics are held in all the villages either in the Dispensaries or in the local schools,
the most recently opened being those at Jidhafs and at Sanabis. At these clinics practical
demonstrations and lectures arc given on:
(i) daily bathing of children
(ii) care of hair and nails
(iii) clothing suitable to climate
(iv) advantages of fresh air and sunshine
(v) feeding and diet
(vi) disposal of refuse
(vii) general hygiene and personal cleanliness

The old custom of “swaddling” the child in the belief that if a child is tied up it develops
stronger muscles than if it were free, is slowly dying out among the mothers attending the
Child Welfare Clinics. It is to be hoped that the instilling of “/:/zo/” in the children’s eyes will
eventually be stamped out as this khol is full of pieces of grit and eventually leads to a local
infection.

The use of branding as a therapeutic measure is a problem to be tackled and discouraged.

Diet of Mothers and Children. This, whether due to poverty or ignorance appears to be
very inadequate. Of 100 of the mothers interviewed 70 per cent said they could not afford meat.
The other 30 per cent have meat once a week. Their staple diet appears to be rice and dates
when in season, at other times they have fish and rice. Many of the children are very under­
nourished and cases are not infrequently seen where a child aged about 2 years of age weighs
only 7 lbs.