119. 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, 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, to prescribe the conditions under which he may be allowed to reside there.
120. Private asylums are prohibited and it is an offence to shelter a leper. There are no leper asylums in the Colony.
121. Lepers who are not British subjects are prohibited from entering the Colony and any such who find entrance may be deported. Lepers who are Chinese subjects are sent to Canton whence they may proceed to Shek Lung where there is an official asylum of the Kwang Tung Government, the direction of which is entirely in the hands of the Catholic Mission. During the year the Hong Kong Government paid to the Mission a donation of $2,500.
The number of lepers deported in 1933 was 83.
Notifiable Infectious Diseases.
122. The number of cases of infectious diseases notified during the year and those notified in 1932 were:
1932 1933 Cholera 241 Smallpox 212 566 Diphtheria 205 122 Enteric 202 207 Paratyphoid 8 13 Cerebro-spinal fever 207 191 Puerperal fever 7 12 Rabies (human) + 2 Rabies (animal) 3PLAGUE.
123. For the last four years no case of plague, human or rodent, has been reported in the Colony. The disease has disappeared from Hong Kong and the same may be said of South China generally. The rat population is much the same as it was and so far as we know there is no change in quantity or quality in the flea population. The sanitary conditions in Hong Kong are generally better than they were but in the majority of Chinese towns there is little change. We must accept the fact