Growth and Health of Belgian

The following study was undertaken in the winter of 1944-5, three months after the liberation of Belgium, in order to determine if permanent illeffects of the occupation were manifest in children reared during the war; to review the measures that had been taken to protect children against the severe deprivations from which the country as a whole had suffered; and to assess how far these measures had been successful. Observations were largely confined to the Brussels area, which, though suffering less from aerial bombardment than some other Belgian cities, had had to face the common problems of evacuation, closure of schools, shortage of fuel, and rigid control by the occupying military government in addition to totally inadequate civilian rations. Clinical examinations of children were carried out in infant welfare centres, creches, orphanages, school and hospital clinics, and in private homes; by courtesy of school medical authorities and the Ministry of Public Health, access was obtained to school medical records and examinations of adolescents in state employment; and a detailed study was made of a typical workingclass family with three children reared during the war years. Official rations and the black market. Any figures relating to rations received by the civilian population of Belgium during the war years must be accepted with the utmost reserve. The so-called 'official' rations were seldom if ever available in full, and the food-income of any individual family would vary according to the reserves available, the number of children in the household, the capacity to buy on the black market, the possession of a garden or relatives in the country, medical certification, and other indeterminable factors. Bastenie and his co-workers (1944) have divided the period under review as follows: 1. The serious period when food-supplies were extremely reduced (1941-2). 2. The period when food-supplies were 'corrected' by distribution of herrings, by an increased supply of potatoes, and finally by organization of the black market.