HEALTH
During the year, after the discovery of two children infected with a new strain of avian influenza A virus H9N2, the USD and the RSD took immediate action and stepped up inspection of all poultry retailing outlets.
Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign
Under the Keep Hong Kong Clean Campaign, organised by the Joint Provisional Urban Council/Provisional Regional Council Keep Hong Kong Clean Steering Committee, efforts continued to educate the public to keep the environment clean. through the implementation of a series of educational and community involvement programmes. District-based clean-up activities, including the Keep Hong Kong Clean Activities Funding Scheme, were also organised to encourage public participation. The USD and the RSD between them prosecuted 25 759 litterbugs during the year, resulting in total fines of $13.99 million.
Public Cleaning
The USD and the RSD strove to provide effective and efficient public cleaning. services to maintain satisfactory environmental hygiene standards in the region.
The departments provided manual street-sweeping services in all urban and rural areas. The frequency of sweeping varied from once in alternate days to six times. daily, depending on the need in each area. Coupled with the provision of litter container emptying, street washing, mechanical sweeping and gully emptying services, both departments had all public streets cleaned except expressways as defined in the Road Traffic (Expressways) Regulations, which were cleaned by the Highways Department through its contractors.
Waste was collected daily throughout the year including Sundays and public holidays, except Lunar New Year's Day. The USD had 198 and the RSD 115 refuse collection routes for collecting both domestic waste and junk. Contracting-out of waste collection was introduced in the RSD in 1993 and about 26 per cent of waste in the Provisional Regional Council area was collected by private contractors.
To help prevent the spread of the enterovirus infections, the USD and the RSD maintained frequent checks on chlorine levels in public swimming pools. Inspections of private swimming pools and places of public entertainment with ball-pools for children were also stepped up.
Under Phase I of the Provisional Regional Council's improvement scheme, 553 aqua privies (village toilets without flushing) were refurbished. All trough-type toilets (21 in number) were converted to squatting/pedestal type water closets. Phase II of the scheme began in November 1997 with the upgrading of 55 flushed toilets. This was expected to be completed in 2001.
Trial schemes involving various types of vacuum toilet systems were in progress, and the RSD would adopt the most suitable type with a view to improving the existing village-type toilets.
The Provisional Urban Council's public toilet refurbishment programme continued to upgrade all the existing public toilets. Twenty-nine public toilets in the urban areas were refurbished in 1999.
In older districts where sub-standard housing still existed, the council provided 29 public bathhouses 11 on Hong Kong Island and 18 in Kowloon. To improve cost-
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