PUBLIC HEALTH AND URBAN SERVICES

gramme has been instituted. In an attempt to extend inoculation to children not attending school and to seek out the many non-attenders, a house-to-house campaign was introduced in conjunction with the Urban Services House Cleansing Squads, but it had to be abandoned when the water shortage put an end to the regular work of the squads. Vaccinators attend regularly at Child Welfare Clinics and encourage mothers to have their children inoculated as early as possible. Experi- mental vaccination of new born children has been in operation throughout the year and a method of vaccina- tion has now been evolved by means of which it should be possible to extend the work considerably.

X-ray surveys are carried out, but they are restricted mainly to annual surveys of Government servants and to certain firms who are prepared to undertake the responsibility for the medical care of any of their employees who are found to have the disease.

Leprosy. Owing to the extreme reluctance of the Chinese community to accept cured lepers once they have been in a leper hospital, there has been a shift of emphasis in the policy governing their treatment. Formerly it was the practice to segregate as many lepers as possible at the Mission to Lepers settlement on the island of Hay Ling Chau. Now greater emphasis is being placed on treatment at out-patient leper clinics in the urban areas. In future only severe or com- plicated cases with disfigurement will be encouraged to go to Hay Ling Chau.

The table at Appendix XIII-C shows statistics of the more important infectious diseases in the Colony.

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