K 18
The following Table shows the nature and distribution of these diseases :--
CITY OF VICTORIA HEALTH DISTRICTS.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Peak. Kowloon. Harbour. New Territories. Villages of Hongkong. No Address. Imported. Totals 1909, Totals 1908. Plague,.. 5 6 5 10 2 2 10 91 10 135 1073 Typhoid, 5 5 6 5 16 2 18 20 1 Cholera, Small-pox, со LO 1 2 12 14 5 N Diphtheria, 1 3 GA Puerperal Fever,. 1 1 1 3 6 on [] Relapsing Fever,.. 1 0 3 5 10 7 3 23 7 5 * 38 56 1 22 18 '10 38 | 472 14 19 15 1Table II (page 30) shows the number of notifiable diseases recorded in each month of the year.
Plague.
There was a small outbreak of Plague during the year, the total number of cases registered being 135 as compared with 1,073 in 1908, 240 in 1907 and 893 in 1906. Of these 135 cases 91 occurred in Kowloon and 10 were imported. Thirty-one of the Kowloon cases occurred in Kowloon City—a native city of old rat-ridden dwellings which only came under British jurisdiction in 1899 and has not yet been rebuilt. The Non-Chinese cases comprised 3 Indians, 1 Asiatic Portuguese and 1 Japanese, all resident in Kowloon, and 2 Japanese cases imported from Japan.
The deaths from Plague numbered 108, including 4 Non-Chinese deaths, so that the mortality among the Non-Chinese was ... per cent. and among the Chinese 81 per cent.
Some 650 small bins have been fixed throughout the City and Kowloon and in the more important villages, for the reception of dead rats. These bins are one gallon drums with hinged covers and are fixed to telephone and lamp standards and filled two-thirds full of a 5 per cent. solution of carbolated creasote which is changed once a week. The native population is encouraged to put all rats which they may catch or find dead on their premises into these bins. The bins are visited once daily in the cool weather and twice daily in the hot weather by rat-collectors (one for each Health District), and the rats duly ticketed and delivered at the Mortuary for classification and bacteriological examination.