3.
Neo-natal and Infant Mortality Rates
These rates remained low and are shown in Figure 1. The infant mortality rate was 14.3 per thousand live births and is now at a level lower than many Buropean and American countries. This deoline was due to the development of maternal and child health services and increasing public appreciation of the value of these services. The major causes of infant deaths were congenital anomalies, immaturity, pneumonia and anoxic and hypoxic conditions.
Maternal Mortality
The rate for 1976 wae 0.18 per thousand total births, compared with 0.03 in the previous year. The main causes of maternal mortality were haemorrhagas and toxaemias.
General Mortality
The crude death rate was 5.2 per thousand population. Figure 2 shows the age and sex specific death rates.
The firet leading cause of death was malignant neoplasms, being responsible for 23.1 per cent of all deaths in 1976. The death rate from cancer continued to increase, rising from 50.8 per 100,000 population for both sexes in 1956 to 89.5 in 1966 and to 120.8 in 1976. The common cancera were cancers of the lung, liver, nasopharynx and the stomach,
The second leading cause of death was heart diseases, followed by cerebro-vascular diseases, pneumonia, bronchitis, emphysema and asthma, accidents, suicide and self-inflicted injuries, and tuberculosis.
III.
COMMUNICABLE DISEASES
(Tables 21-25)
The total number of notifications of communicable diseases during 1976 was 13,679. Tuberculosis comprised 50.0 per cent of the total, chickenpox 12.7 per cent and measles 10.7 per cent.
The incidence of major infectious diseases is shown in Figure 3.
Cholera
One imported case was reported in July, The direct contacts were traced and one carrier was subsequently detected and treated. All necessary control measures were undertaken including advice to the public on the importance of observing personal, environmental and food hygiene, A health exhibition on the prevention of diarrhoeal diseasea wae also held in the same month. The routine examination of nightsoil samples for cholera organisms did not reveal any positive results.
Poliomyelitis
been reported.
It was the third successive year when no case had
The maximum number of cases ever recorded in one year was 36) with 52 deaths in the year 1962. The success in the control of this disease is due largely to the introduction of anti-poliomyelitis vaccine in the immunisation programme and the mounting of general immunisation campaigns annually for the past 14 years.
Approximately 95 per cent of infants received one dose of type I polio-vaccine after birth and 78 per cent received two doses of trivalent vaccine at 3-6 months at government maternal and child health centres. Virological investigationa failed to detect any excretor of wild poliovirus among 517 stool samples studied.
Bacillary Dysentery
The number of cases slightly decreased from 397 in
23 per cent of cases occurred in
1975 to 356 in 1976. children under five.
on investigation.
Diphtheria
A total of 108 carriers were detected
One case was reported in 1976, as compared with 2087 cases in 1959.