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(d) Leprosy.
No deaths from leprosy were registered in 1946.
The Japanese had their own methods of eliminating leprosy from Hong Kong during the occupation and the Leper Settlement purchased by the Government prior to the Pacific war had been allowed to fall into ruins by the Japanese. The few lepers who survived and escaped into Kwangtung territory started to trickle back in 1946. In the absence of suitable accommodation in Hong Kong, the present policy is to send such patients to Sheklung where they are cared for by the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in charge of St. Joseph's Leper Asylum. One European leper was admitted to the isolation block of Kowloon Hospital and a few cases were treated at out-patient departments pending transfer to Shek- lung. At a census carried out some years before the Second World War, there was evidence of about a thousand lepers in Hong Kong. The number at present, is probably less than one-tenth of that figure.
(iii) Helminthic Diseases.
Ascariasis continued to be the commonest helminthic infection in Hong Kong. Clonorchis and trichuris infections come second on the list, and ankylostoma and fasciolopsis are relatively rarely met with. No specimens of stools examined in either laboratory showed enterobius infection.