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4. Year by year, however, the value of Western Medicine becomes more and more appreciated. Proof of this is the ever-increasing number of those who attend the out-patient departments of the Government hospitals and of those who seek admission to the wards.
5. Judging from the hospital returns, the important diseases of this category in decreasing order of prevalence are bronchitis, diarrhoea, hepatitis, pneumonia and broncho-pneumonia, influenza, and dysentery.
6. Communicable Diseases.—(a) Mosquito or insect-borne diseases—The mosquito-borne diseases, Malaria, Dengue, and Filariasis, not being notifiable, incidence figures are not available, and the only information obtainable is that put up by certain hospitals and private practitioners. Most of the population either receive no treatment or are attended by Chinese herbalists who send in no reports. Such being the position, it is obvious that incidence and death rates cannot be given.
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7. Malaria.—Judging from the hospital admissions, this disease was less prevalent than in previous years. The cases treated in the Government Hospitals for the last four (4) years were as follows:
1925 1926 1927 1928 1,142 920 670 4878. The incidence among the Police in the New Territories for the same period was:
1925 1926 1927 1928 1,205 877 428 278All Police Stations are now screened, and the men provided with mosquito curtains. Prophylactic quinine is given, and the living rooms are regularly sprayed with insecticide to repel mosquitoes and to kill those that may be present.
9. The total number of deaths attributed to Malaria was 295 or 2% of the total deaths. During the last ten years, the calculated death rates per 1,000 population have on one occasion only exceeded unity. This does not prove that the Colony is free from the breeding places of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, but it would appear to prove that there are few such places within flying distance of the areas where the masses of the population reside.