31
These were the most potent factors in the spread of the epidemic; and these simple but urgent matters should be put right forthwith. While I write this, the houses in First Street and several other streets not far from the Go- verument Civil Hospital are in as bad a condition as—i
-if not worse than they
were in April 1894.
28. In the same Report (page 386, Government Gazette, 1895) Dr. Lowson said: "I am convinced that an epidemic of plague in Hongkong could be tackled and got under rapidly if men in sufficient number could be got to do the work." Yet with the experience of recurring epidemics of Plague since 1894 we find a completely undermanned Medical Staff endeavouring to grapple with it in the present year, in which from January to June, there have been over 1,400 reported cases. At the height of the epidemic there was one Medical Officer on duty at the Infectious Hospitals for European and Asiatics at Kennedy Town, who was compelled through want of accommodation to reside a mile from the hospitals, and whose duties also included attendance on the Prisons and the Police. A civil practitioner was not appointed to relieve the official doctor of a portion of his duties until the matter had been ventilated in the Public Press. There is but one Medical Officer of Health, who is assisted by one Sanitary Surveyor and twenty Inspectors of Nuisances, who are without special training. This is the Public Health staff to look after a community of over 280,000 persons, the lower classes of whom are most careless and insanitary in their habits. A Sanitary Inspector takes two months to visit thoroughly his health district, a duty which should be done daily, and there is only one Inspector for the whole of the markets in the Colony. In the city of Liverpool with its population of 668,645, against that of Hongkong of 283,418, there are no less than 97 sanitary inspectors, 52 of whom hold the certificate of the Sanitary Institute, and whose previous training and occupation have been such as to fit them for the special duties they are called upon to discharge. With a population approximating to half that of Liverpool we have but twenty Inspectors without training or certificates to deal with an Asiatic population requiring more than ordinary supervision.
29.--Attention might also be called to the fact that the appointment of the important post of Boarding Health Officer of this great shipping centre has hitherto been given to local practitioners, whose private practice naturally interferes with their Harbour duties, with the result that Mail and other steamers have been sub- jected at various times to vexatious and unnecessary detentions. In consequence of the strong representations which have recently been made by the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce to the effect that the Port Health Officer should give his undivided attention to his shipping duties, the Government has given assurances that the Medical inspection of shipping visiting the Colony shall be placed on a more satisfactory footing, still the present system is so radically faulty that we deem it advisable to invite attention to the subject.
30. So serious has the position become that the Hongkong General Chamber of Commerce addressed the Government on the 7th June, 1901, and a copy of such letter and H.E. the Governor's reply are attached :-
[Already printed. See Pages 1-3.]
31. The foregoing statements prove that the local Government has failed to give effect, save in a very qualified form, to the measures so frequently urged upon it by its own Medical Officers and other experts; its efforts, so far, have met with so little result, indeed, that the Colony is now suffering severely from the annually recurring visitations of plague and, in a lesser