Chapter 9: Public Health
The only incidence of the six major quarantinable diseases (cholera, plague, smallpox, relapsing fever, typhus and yellow fever) was four cases of typhus. The general incidence of notifiable diseases has risen slightly, compared with 1954, but mortality has decreased. The situation in re- gard to typhoid fever is particularly encouraging, the number of cases notified during 1955 being the lowest recorded since 1950, and the number of deaths (58) the lowest since 1946.
There is still a disappointingly high incidence and mortality, particularly amongst young children, from tuber- culosis, the dysenteries, both primary and secondary pneumonias, and gastro-enteritis; but last year saw a definite halt to the steady rising incidence of diphtheria, and this year a substantial decrease in the notifications and mortality from that disease, following the intensive mass immunization campaigns of the past three years. Malaria has long been under effective control, and this year fewer cases than ever were reported, nearly all of them relapses, not fresh infections.
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Tuberculosis, however, continues to be the major health problem, and while the present gross overcrowding and economic depression continue, there is little prospect of achieving any marked improvement. The death-rate from this disease, though falling steadily under modern treatment, is still several times higher than that of the United Kingdom. A distressing feature of the disease in Hong Kong is that about one-third of the deaths occur in children under five; an index of social and economic conditions. Amongst adults an unusually high percentage of deaths occurs in men, pro- bably a reflexion of the abnormal sex-distribution of the population, as well as of economic stresses.
The control of leprosy has shown increasingly good results, and some progress has been made in the organized rehabilitation of cases in which the disease has been effectively arrested. Special attention was again given during the year to anti-enteric measures, anti-diphtheria immunization, and increasing the level of vaccination protection against smallpox.