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obtaining in many of the squatter areas. Typhoid fever, which has shown an increasing prevalence for the past eight years, caused great concern as the number of cases recorded was higher than ever before and, at the incidence peak which occurred late in June, the number of notifications received in a week reached the high figure of 71. The resources of the infectious diseases hospitals were then strained to the limit, and unable to admit all cases, so that it became necessary to make arrangements for the accommodation of the surplus cases in the wards of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. )
Other intestinal infections were also of frequent occurrence but did not present such a problem as did typhoid fever.
During the colder months, in the first quarter of the year, diphtheria occurred in epidemic proportion throwing a serious additional strain on hospital resources. It was fortunate, how- ever, that following the normal pattern, incidence substantially diminished with the onset of the warmer weather just at the time when the incidence of typhoid fever was increasing rapidly.
There was a further rise in the birth rate to the figure of 33.6 per thousand population, as compared with 32.0 in the previous year. The total number of births was 75,544. Deaths numbered 18,300 and the rate per thousand was 8.1, a low rate which, in part, stems from the Colony's unusual population age distribution occasioned by the influx of young adults since the end of the war.
The maternal mortality rate was 0.97 per thousand births. as compared with 1.14 per thousand births in 1952, and 1.59 and 1.7 in 1951 and 1950, respectively. There was a further drop in the infant mortality rate from 77.1 per thousand live births in 1952, to 73.6, thus continuing the trend which has been evident since 1947, when the infant mortality rate was 102.3 per thousand live births. These satisfactory figures are
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