The Mother and Child Foundation

The Mother and Baby Clinic opened in Well Street, Hackney in 1993 through a substantial donation by late Dr Anne Gibson and The Mother & Child Foundation to apply the research findings to the community. Hackney is an ethnically diverse inner city area in the East-end of London with the highest rate of low birth weight.

The primary concern of The Clinic is to improve the nutritional status of women at risk of low birth weight. The Clinic offers mothers nutritional assessment and counselling on diet and lifestyle, aiming to reduce the incidence low birth weight and associated problems. Various teaching aids are being used such as group discussion, cookery demonstration for ethnic groups, visits to local markets/supermarkets to teach mothers how to shop on a budget, nutrient rich foods, introducing unfamiliar foods and encourage them to widen the variety of foods they eat. This approach led to a parallel programme in Moscow set up by Professor Alexander Baturin and Dr Igor Kon (shown below) from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

[From the left: Michael Pirkis, Dorothy Pirkis, Prof. Alexander Baturin, Cheryl Louzado, Dr Anne Gibson , Wendy Doyle, Dr Igor Kon, Prof. Michael Crawford, Somi Guha, Margaret Wynn, Roy Ridgeway, Arthur Wynn]