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but even with these, and with the loss of life accompanying other preventable conditions, such as tuberculosis, malaria, cerebrospinal meningitis, relapsing fever, typhus, enteric fever, dysentery and diphtheria, the total mortality was still remarkably low. Tuberculosis continued to be of all prevent- able conditions the worst single killing disease. In contrast to the tens of thousands of deaths from starvation, beri-beri and other gross malnutritional conditions which were preva- lent during the Japanese occupation, only two deaths were attributed to starvation in 1946.
This record is all the more remarkable in the light of the fact that some 20,000 dwellings were destroyed during the war, displacing about 160,000 persons; although 2,118 were European-type houses representing loss of better type accom- modation for 7,237 persons, the great majority were dwellings which would normally have housed Chinese persons of the poorer classes. The resultant overcrowding of those tenements still remaining intact was inevitable, and the influx of popula- tion during the year under review was such that thousands of homeless persons could find shelter only in partially demo- lished buildings or in insanitary shacks lacking hygienic facilities and other essentials. These groups provided the main foci for dangerous infectious diseases.
Infection Risk.
The clearance of bomb rubble was slow through shortage of transport and the bombed areas were a serious source of danger to the public health. It was difficult to prevent their misuse as general dumps for refuse, human wastes and even the bodies of those who had died of smallpox and other infectious diseases. Again they provided a harbourage for the colonies of rats with which the urban areas were swarming at the time of the re-occupation. With the Colony's unenvi- able reputation of having been one of the plague spots from which spread the plague epidemic of the 'nineties, and with plague in neighbouring ports along the China Coast, these accumulations of refuse gave cause for considerable anxiety.
Sewage.
War damage to sewers and the illegal connecting up of closets with the storm water system, constituted another danger to health, particularly from cholera and other acute intestinal diseases. Most of the human wastes in Hong Kong and Kowloon are still dealt with by a pan-conservancy system, whereby the pan contents are deposited in sewage barges along the bunds. A proportion of this is taken to the New Territories, and rendered relatively innocuous in maturing tanks before being distributed to farmers as fertiliser. The greater part is dumped at sea, pending the construction of additional batteries of tanks in the New Territories.