Protecting Cleveland Babies

Dr. R. B. Boldt, head of the bureau of child hygiene in the Cleveland health department, has been fighting vigorously recently to protect the babies of the Sixth City from the dangers of scarcity and high prices of food. He is making a strenuous effort to get enough sugar to keep up a steady supply for distribution from the city babies' dispensaries to mothers and has issued an emphatic warning of the rise in the baby death rate which accompanies a rise in milk prices.

Sugar, necessary for modifying cow's milk to make it like mother's milk, is being distributed in quantities of about one-half pound a week, at ten cents a pound, under strict supervision to insure that babies alone get the benefit of it. On the milk situation, Boldt's figures show that in August, when Cleveland milk prices went up, the number of deaths of babies shot up to a point 80 per cent higher than in August, 1916.

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Health Board Bankrupt Youngstown's health department is "broke." It can't pay its bills and merchants have refused it further credit. Members of the board declare that appropriations made. by council have been insufficient to meet the running expenses of the department. The total indebtedness to January 1, 1918, is estimated at $1,200. Council will be asked to provide more money for the coming year.

The comment of the Youngs

town Telegram on the situation follows:

Once again the city board of health is in deep financial woe. Merely being in financial trouble cannot worry the board much since it has never known the day of adequate monetary assistance but it is again without any funds at all and even without credit until it gets some funds. With its 1916 blls unpaid no one welcomes any of its further ac

counts.

The board of health has been a sort of orphan. It has had to struggle along with only the most beggarly of appropriations. Yet there is no department in Youngstown whose success is more necessary, whose work is more vital to the city or whose members do more with so little return. It is a volunteer job and apparently even a thankless one.

This is an unfortunate and absolutely wrong situation. Attention has been directed to it many times but apparently without result. It should be remedied once and for all.

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Found Health Center

The Cincinnati health department has established a health center in the Nineteenth ward of the

city, with headquarters in a school

house in the ward. The center was founded with the idea of carrying out a program which includes:

Pre-natal care and education of expectant mothers; infant welfare center on a full-time basis; examination of children of pre-school age; school medical examination and intensive follow-up work; establishment of health leagues in each of the three schools in the district; Junior Red Cross work, including elementary hygiene, home care of the sick and first aid; better housing and improvement of community sanitary conditions; frequent inspection and

rating of bakeshops, dairymen, groceries, restaurants, barbershops, etc.; establishment of a community bulletin; establishment of a night clinic for working men, if there is need for such service.

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Conservation of Value

State health statistics for 1916, just issued, shows that 20.9 per cent of all deaths in Lorain county were among infants less than one year of age.

The percentage is too large, it is readily agreed. But the method of reducing the toll is the problem that confronts every clean-minded, conscientious citizen.

Baby deaths are largely due to ignorance. A majority of the tiny lives would be spared if the knowledge of proper care was at hand. Superstitions and antiquated methods of care are leading factors in the making of the big death rate.

What can be done to combat the evil? There is but one cure-education-the finding out of prospective mothers and carrying to them the message of proper baby - Lorain Herald.

care.

Plan Change in Dayton Amendment of the Dayton city charter to provide for the separation of the health and welfare departments of the city government has been proposed. Physicians of the city are the chief backers of the proposal. They say there is no direct relationship between the health and welfare activities of the city, and that the official connection tends to handicap both.

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Commissioner Names Health
Officer

Dr. Carl Dewey has been appointed city health officer of Conneaut by Dr. A. W. Freeman, State