M 140
—
Pellagra and other deficiency diseases do not appear to influence mortality returns in these territories.
Other nutritional diseases including general malnutrition and starvation, however, carried off 1,033 persons, mostly of tender age.
(6) PUERPERAL MORTALITY.
Diseases and accidents of pregnancy and parturition were responsible for the relatively small number of seventy-six deaths representing a ratio of 2.4 per thousand living births.
In spite of the low standard of environmental hygiene met with in the poorer quarters of Hong Kong and Kowloon, a remarkably few women appear to lose their lives in child-birth as compared with the total mortality. It is difficult to believe that good midwifery is the principal reason for this and it seems more likely that the average Chinese woman possesses some degree of racial resistance to the invasion of streptococci. Nineteen of the deaths referred to above were attributed to eclampsia.
(7) VIOLENCE AND OTHER EXTERNAL CAUSES.
Before leaving the subject of causes of death, mention might be made of the relatively high death-rate recorded from affections produced by violence and other external causes.
A total of 864 deaths were registered under this heading of which 366 were due to drowning 103 to suicide.
Further details of causes of death are to be found in Tables LXXVIII, LXXIX and LXXX at the end of this section—the last two relating specifically to cholera and tuberculosis.
CERTIFICATION OF CAUSES OF DEATH.
As might be expected in a community made up largely of illiterates a minority of whom appreciate the advantages of Western medicine, the bulk of the deaths recorded are in persons who have not sought medical aid during their lifetime.
It is for this reason and the fact that the understaffing of the Medical Department resulting in, for example, a busy Health Officer responsible for a population of about 600,000 having to carry out "autopsies" on as many as thirty-one dead bodies in a day in addition to his normal duties as a medical officer of health that a certain amount of reserve needs to be exercised in accepting causes of death as listed.
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