General
PART VII
BIRTHS AND DEATHS REGISTRY
58. The registration of births and deaths is compulsory under the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance (Cap. 174). During the year, facilities for registration were further improved by the establishment of an additional district death registry at Mui Wo and the conversion of the district birth registry at Queen Mary Hospital into a full-time registry for both births and deaths. Besides the General Register Office which is situated on the second floor of Li Po Chun Chambers, 92-97, Connaught Road Central, there are ten district registries on Hong Kong Island and four in Kowloon. In the New Territories births are registered by district registrars who call at the Rural Committee Offices in the various districts according to a regular programme, and deaths are reported to local police stations. A mobile team operated in the New Territories through- out the year dealing with applications for post-registration of births. Table XVII shows the present organization of the Registry.
Births and Deaths Registered
59. During 1959, 104,579 births and 20,250 deaths were registered as compared with 106,624 births and 20,554 deaths in 1958. For the first time since the end of the war the number of recorded births has fallen compared with the previous year. In the absence of data as to the structure of the Colony's population it is impossible to form any firm conclusion as to the cause of the decline. It is, however, reasonable to suppose that the increased activities of the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong have had some material effect in checking the hitherto uninterrupted rise in the number of births recorded annually. Table XVIII shows the numbers of births and deaths registered during the years 1946 to 1959.
Post-registration of Births
60. During the year 1959/60, 3,773 births were post-registered with the consent of the Registrar given under Section 9(3) of the Ordinance. Of these, 2,444 (65%) were in respect of births in the New Territories where no facilities for registration were available until 1932, and the facilities then provided were by no means fully used before the war. There has therefore been for many years a constant flow of applications for post-registration in the New Territories. This developed into a posi- tive flood upon the mobile team's commencing operations in February
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