HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1954
of the year, it was estimated that the reservoir would be in use by 1957 · When fully operating Tai Lam Chung will supply almost as much water as all the other reservoirs together.
The health of the community during the year was good, and bearing in mind the immense health problem created by the destitution of about
hundred
thousand persons in an abnormally hot and dry year, this fact is a measure of the efficiency of the departments who deal with health and sanitation in the Colony. There were no large outbreaks of serious contagious diseases and the main health problem was once again tuberculosis, although for many years every effort has been made to stamp out the disease. An interesting but tragic problem has arisen in connexion with the Colony's lepers, the majority of whom live in a leper colony run by the Mission to Lepers on a small island a few miles from Hong Kong Island. Lepers can be taken into the leprosarium, treated and cured, but the dread and loathing with which the Chinese people regard this disease and the irradicable stigma of the leprosarium make it almost impossible for a cured leper to return to, and live amongst, his relatives and friends. Unfortunately this attitude of mind also conveys itself to the victim, as it were, in the reverse, and the result has been that many lepers at the leprosarium, though cured, have refused to be discharged. Although the rehabilitation of a few cured lepers seems a small matter compared with the immense problem of resettling the squatter population, it may in the long run be more difficult to solve, for the main obstacle to its solution is not finance but the ignorance and prejudice of the community. These facts have brought about a radical change in Government's policy towards lepers. It has
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