M 22
Tuberculosis. If one assumes the probability of some of the cases of broncho-pneumonia being tubercular the death figures show that this disease still continues to rank as the chief cause of mortality. Pulmonary tuberculosis is a chronic and debilitating disease and one which unfits the individual from the active exercise of his employment months or even years previous to his death. It is, therefore, most probable that the death figures form only a partial index of the prevalence of the disease in the Colony as many, who would have died here had they remained, returned to their native villages in China there to end their lives among their friends and relatives. If the death figures were multiplied by two the result would be not far from the truth.
There is no sanatorium and no special institute for the care of persons suffering from chronic diseases and the hospital accommodation all told is only one bed per 1,000 population. It is obvious, therefore, that the majority of sufferers from this infectious disease must struggle against the ravages of their affliction in the crowded tenement houses under conditions which leave little hope for their ultimate recovery. It is the custom with the Chinese of to-day, as it was with the English of yesterday, to expectorate anywhere and everywhere and thus each case of tuberculosis is an active focus for the spread of the disease.
There is little hope for improvement under present conditions.
Leprosy. The law dealing with Leprosy is the Leprosy Ordinance of 1910 which makes leprosy a notifiable disease and gives power to the Governor-in-Council 'to appoint such places as he shall think fit to be leper asylums for the segregation and treatment of lepers' and power to the Governor to order that a leper be segregated in a leper asylum, or if there be provision for effective isolation and medical treatment in the patient's own home, the conditions under which he may be allowed to remain there.
Since November 1910, when the Au Tau Settlement in the New Territory was destroyed by fire, no place has been 'appointed a leper asylum' and there is now no settlement in either the Colony or New Territories.
Though leprosy is a notifiable disease very few cases are notified. Considering the great interchange between Hong Kong and the neighbouring province of Kwangtung it is not unnatural to suppose that the incidence rate will be much the same in the two places. In Kwangtung the incidence rate has been estimated as one case per thousand population or the same as...