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out ot‘ the dark ages ...Relative to our comment last week that Negro education is wanting in several important respects, notably in the teaching of sanitation practices, child care and disease prevention, it has been called to our attention that the State Board of Health has done laudable work in instructing Negroes in midwifery.When it is considered that the United States is supposedly a world leader in public health practice, that its doctors are the finest tc be had and the most numerous, that its hospitals are models of cleanliness and efficiency, the loss of American children at birth is disgracefully large—-greater, in fact, that iti any civilized nation today. The record of child-bed maternal deaths from puerperal fever and other causes, many of them inexcusable, is correspondingly shocking.In shame-faced realization of this tragic record, American medicine is making sincereefforts to erase the blot on its ’scutcheon. For one, the Mississippi State Board of Health has demonstrated that an intelligent educational campaign can quickly reduce the maternal and infant mortality rates. It has also demonstrated that the Negro - can be educated along health lines and can make use of the information received.When Negro mid wives were taken “under the wing:’ of the Board’s Miss Osborn a few years ago, only a handful of them couldread or write. They were dirty, and primitive superstitions were foremost in their minds. Cobwebs and vinegar were applied to “stop bleeding and promote healing.” Concoctions of dirt-daubers’ nests and herbs were given the mother “to make labor easy.” Turpentine was given for convulsions, adcknginsult to already injured organs.Today, the equipment of State-instructed Negro midwives is clean and practical. Their technique is to “let alone” and give nature • a chance—a fundamental in ail good obstetrics; to recognize salient danger signs and call physicians for help.This program has resulted in cutting down the Negro maternal death rate 75 per cent in 20 years.
Newspaper Details
Greenville Delta Weekly
Greenville, Mississippi, US
Mon, Nov 29, 1937
Page 13
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 09 May 2023
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