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75,790, which shows a continuation of its upward trend which was
only halted during the war years. In view of the picture presented
by the vital statistics its continued growth must be due to
migration.
It is refreshing to turn from these discouraging figures, which
are mostly beyond our control, to the statistics which measure,
as far as it is measurable, our skill in the management of our
environment. These are in no way discouraging: on the contrary,
as reference to the summary on page 11 will show, and as
1 have already mentioned, our maternity mortality is Nil, our
infant mortality is 11.73 per thousand live births. Our death
rate is 9.35 per thousand population, our deaths from enteritis
and diarrhoea under 2 is Nil and our incidence of diphtheria for
the year is Nil. These, perhaps the most important figures for
comparing the health of a population, are more favourable — and
in some instances so by a considerable margin — than those for
all the comparable populations, including the country as a whole,
set out in the table for comparison.
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