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217. Later, the Government Medical Department took over the care and treatment of smallpox patients partly on public health grounds since herbalists possess somewhat heterodox views on the method of dissemination of the disease—and partly in order to provide skilled nursing for the afflicted.
218. The Tung Wah Smallpox Hospital then became an institution where lepers could be housed. By arrangement with the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the treatment of these cases was carried out by a Government medical officer, and Government paid $9 per head per month and the wages of cooks, amahs, and coolies to the Tung Wah Committee.
219. This system of dual control was unsatisfactory and uneconomic and had a still greater disadvantage in that the leper patients came and went as they wished.
220. By agreement with the Tung Wah Hospital Committee, the Government paid the sum of $50,000 for the site and buildings comprising the settlement and took over the rationing and management entirely from the Committee as from the 1st of February, 1939, when the settlement was duly proclaimed as such under the Leper Ordinance.
221. An immediate saving of about $4 per head per month was effected thereby, and a complete change took place in the matter of discipline. True, sixty-seven lepers escaped from the premises in spite of a small police guard, but there was a cessation of the former custom of regarding the place as a convenient institution in which to avoid paying rent and from which to sally forth to streets, markets, tea-houses, restaurants, cinemas, etc., at will and to "sell" their disease to others.
222. The change in administration was not altogether popular, as might be expected. Every effort was made, however, to counteract the boredom resulting from this restricted freedom. Gifts of a radio set, ping-pong, cards, mahjong, dominoes, daily newspapers, monthly magazines, and so on, were obtained through the generosity of a Chinese sympathizer—Mr. Ho Kom Tong, O.B.E.
223. Occupational therapy in the form of gardens was started with seedlings gifted by the Botanical and Forestry Department.
224. In addition, careful thought was given to the comfort and well-being of the lepers, each inmate being provided with a bed—in place of having to lie on the floor as before—and the dietary was overhauled and placed on a sound physiological basis.
225. That the conditions were generally appreciated by the inmates is proved by the fact that twenty out of forty lepers transferred to a settlement on the Island of Ching Wei near Swatow walked (some with perforating ulcers of the feet) for twenty days over land and sought readmission to the Hong Kong Settlement. The transfer had been effected by arrangement with the Mayor of the Municipality of Swatow, and similar transfers took place to St. Joseph's Leper Asylum at Shek Lung under the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception and to the Pakhoi Settlement with the consent of the authorities of the Church Missionary Society. In all cases, the Hong Kong Government guaranteed to meet the costs of maintenance at the rate of H.K. $4 per head per month.
226. Those transferred were Chinese nationals who had crossed into British territory with other refugees.
227. The Hong Kong Leper Settlement is not designed to take more than 144 in all, and it is imperative that it should be reserved as far as possible for Hong Kong citizens who fall victim to the disease.