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HEALTH
and child health, school health and port health services and is responsible for measures to control epidemic and endemic disease.
The estimated expenditure of the department for the financial year 1971-2 is $197,269,700. To this should be added subventions totalling an estimated $88,881,900 to many non-government medical institutions and organisations. The estimated capital expenditure on hospital and other buildings, including furniture and equipment, is $40,757,000.
COMMUNICABLE DISEASES
Cholera has not appeared in Hong Kong since the notification of the last case in October 1969 and up to the time of this report in November 1971. Routine sampling of nightsoil for cholera vibrio was carried out on a year-round basis as part of the surveillance programme. All the samples were negative for cholera vibrio. As the disease has become endemic in this part of the world, special preventive measures were continued. Emphasis was placed on the importance of personal, environmental and food hygiene as safe- guards against the enteric group of communicable diseases, and quarantine restrictions were maintained in respect of neighbouring countries declared infected.
Tuberculosis remains Hong Kong's principal community health problem. It is believed from the figures available that approximately 0.8 per cent of the population is suffering from active pulmonary tuberculosis requiring treatment. Males are affected at least twice as commonly as females, the disease being especially common in elderly men, while drug addicts are a group particularly prone. Tuberculosis in the young is now relatively uncommon and the former large numbers of acute and often fatal cases of tuberculosis in infants are no longer seen.
The Government either by subvention or directly through the Government Chest Service spends more than $21 million annually on control measures. The tuberculosis control programme is a combined effort between the Government Chest Service, the Hong Kong Anti-Tuberculosis and Thoracic Diseases Association and the Junk Bay Medical Relief Council, while certain other organisations, including the Tung Wah Group and the Caritas Medical Centre also provide treatment facilities, maintained mainly with the aid of substantial government subventions. The Government Chest Service operates six full-time clinics equipped with radiological facilities and 15 subsidiary centres throughout the Colony. The seventh full- time clinic to serve the Tsuen Wan-Kwai Chung area is scheduled