Sessional_Paper_1907 — Page 821

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PLAGUE MEASURES,

There are at present four Plague Inspectors for the City of Victoria, and one for Kowloon Inspector FINCHER being in charge of Health Districts 1, 2 and 3, and the Peak, Inspector S. M. GIDLEY in charge (acting) of Districts 4, 5 and 6, Inspector KNIGHT in charge of Districts 7 and 8, Inspector ALLEN in charge of Districts 9 and 10, and Inspector MACKENZIE in charge of Kowloon.

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There are eleven coloured Foremen Interpreters, one for each District of the City of Victoria and one for Kowloon, who supervise the work of the rat-catchers, assist in the house-in-house cleansing, and act as Interpreters to the Inspectors where necessary. There are five gangs in the City of Victoria each consisting of one Chinese Foreman, one artisan and seven coolies. Inspectors FINCHER and GIDLEY have each one and a half gangs, and the other two Plague Inspectors have a gang each, while Kowloon also has a gang consisting of a Chinese Foreman, two artisans and ten coolies.

During non-epidemic periods the whole of this staff is engaged in house-to-house clean- sing work, about ten houses or thirty floors a day are dealt with, and each tenant receives three days' notice, in English and Chinese, on a form similar to the sub-joined, marked A, requiring him to thoroughly cleanse his premises. On the day fixed the gang attends in the street opposite the houses named, and supplies hot water and soap solution to the tenants, and cleans out all empty floors, basements, etc., the tenants themselves cleansing out their own premises without assistance from us. The refuse turned out during this cleansing is removed by the gang to the nearest dust-boat. The soap solution is also used by the tenants for washing their bed-boards, etc., in the street or on the verandah.

When the cleansing work is completed by the tenants the Inspector visits every floor, accompanied by the Foreman Interpreter and some of the coolies with a bucket of Pesterine (liquid fuel) and some mops, and this Pesterine is applied to the sides and corners of the floors, and to the skirtings and round the partitions of the cubicles, and to the corners of the stairs, by means of the mops, under the personal supervision of the Inspector. At this visit when the floors are clear of furniture, etc., the Inspector makes special note of the condition of the ground surfaces, the absence of gratings to drain-inlets and ventilators, and the presence of rat runs, and all these matters are dealt with by legal notice at once. In Districts 4, 5 and 6 crude Phenol is used instead of Pesterine, for purposes of comparison, in accordance with the wishes of the Board on this subject. The tenants are invited, in the attached notice, to allow their bedding and spare clothing to be steamed, in order to destroy fleas and other vermin and their ova, and compensation is offered for all articles damaged. Should a case of Plague occur in a house, the Kaifong of the District is informed, and the floor on which the case has occurred is disinfected by the Plague staff, the walls being sprayed with corrosive sublimate, and the floor and the bed-boards washed with Jeyes' fluid or Cyllin (half a pint to the gallon); crude carbolic acid is poured into the rat-runs, which are then filled up with cement; and the clothing and bedding is sent to the Disinfecting Station to be steamed. The remaining floors of the infected house are cleansed by the tenants in the same manner as in the house-to-house cleansing. Should there be any ceilings or stair linings in the infected house these are removed and compensation is paid for them, if the case has been duly reported, while illegalities are dealt with by notice. The compensation is, in the case of Chinese, assessed separately by the Kaifong of the districts and by the Plague Inspector, and their assessments are dealt with by a Committee of the Sanitary Board. The Kaifong are appointed by the Tung Wa Hospital for the City of Victoria, and in Kowloon by the inhabitants of Kowloon Point, Yaumati, and Hunghom respectively.

Any spare time at the disposal of the Plague Inspectors is occupied in paying special visits to houses in which cases of plague have occurred in the previous season, with a view to seeing that they are free of rat-runs and provided with impervious ground surfaces.

The Chinese have established Public Dispensaries and also district Plague Hospitals which in the City of Victoria are managed by a Committee of which the Registrar General and the two Chinese members of the Sanitary Board are members; in Kowloon, a purely local Committee manages the Dispensary and the Hospital. These institutions are supported by voluntary contributions, and each is in charge of a Licentiate of the Hongkong College of Medicine for Chinese, who sees out-patients at the Dispensary, performs vaccinations, visits patients in their own homes, and treats the patients in the District Hospital. Cases of in- fectious disease are notified by these doctors to the nearest District Sanitary Office, and in the case of Plague, the patients may be treated in the District Hospital.