CHINESE LEPER COLONY

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26857, 9 October 1952, Page 6

CHINESE LEPER COLONY

ESTABLISHMENT ON ISLAND SITE

A strange and little known migration of displaced people has just ended with the removal of the last case of contagious leprosy from Hong Kong Island to a new lepers’ home on the island of Hay Ling Chau, according to the Rev. Murray H. Feist, Dominion secretary of the Mission to Lepers. When the Communists took over iti China many lepers fled to freedom in the Hong Kong territories. More than 100 of them “squatted” in the grounds of the gene* al hospital in Hong Kong, and became a source of embarrassment to the authorities and of fear to patients ahd visitors. They were men. women, and children in all stages of the disease; some were ablebodied. but they had been driven from home because of the leprous patches oh their hands and faces; others could just hobble. For some time no one could solve the problem they presented. * Then Dr. Neil Fraser, medical sec* retary for China of the Mission to Lepfers, himself displaced from China* took Up their case. He tended them alone at first. He got bamboo huts built for them on the beach at Sandy Bay and, with the promise of food and treatment, got the patients there. But the 100 had now become 200, so some fast hut building had to be done. Here two New Zealand nurses helped Dr. Fraser. They were Sister Kathleen Hall and Sister Dorothy Robertson. By the time things Were organised there were 300 patients. But they could Hot stay at Sandy Bay. However. Dr. Fraser aroused interest and raised funds. He augmented a grant by the Mission to Lepers, and secured an island site for a permanent leprosarium. The fittest of the lepers Were ferried to this island, and they established another temporary colony—one in which they could live while building the permanent cottages, workshops and hospital buildings under the direction of a few nonleper tradesmen. Trie last of the infectious cases have now been transferred to this permanent leprosarium, where they are receiving the most up-to-date treatment.