Annual departmental report by the Director of Medical and Health Services / Hong Kong.

  • Hong Kong. Medical Department.
Date:
[1959]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual departmental report by the Director of Medical and Health Services / Hong Kong. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/158 (page 1)
    INTRODUCTION The Colony of Hong Kong occupies a land area of 391 square miles of which 36 square miles is the urban area. Within the urban area are Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and New Kowloon. The estimated mid-year population during 1958 was 2,748 000 of which 83% was concentrated in the urban area giving a density of population of 62,800 persons to the square mile. 2. Concentrated around a major sea port with an international air¬ port three miles from the centre of Kowloon this urban population must be regarded as very vulnerable to the introduction of epidemic disease by sea and by air. In addition the terminus of the Kowloon- Canton Railway lies on the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula. The Railway provides the only land link with mainland China and there is a con¬ siderable to and fro movement of population by this route. There is also a migration of unknown size by small coastal vessels, plying between the mainland and Hong Kong, using the bays and anchorages on a long and indented coastline and on the some 100 islands within the Colony boundaries. 3. The age and sex structure of the population is not known but it is believed that one third are under 14 years of age and that there is a slight predominance of males in the adult age groups. Until a full population census has been done, early in 1961, the distribution of population between Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Terri¬ tories cannot be determined with any accuracy. Meantime there are thought to be just over one million people living on the Island, about 1J million in Kowloon and approximately 400,000 in the New Territories. 4. Hong Kong Island is primarily a commercial and residential centre with very dense concentrations of population in the heavily built up area lying along its north shore. The majority of these people live in grossly overcrowded tenements. In Kowloon and New Kowloon there is a similar density in the commercial centre of Kowloon which is sur¬ rounded by a number of resettlement estates built during the past five years to house squatters. On the periphery of the Kowloon urban area, numerous textile and other light industrial undertakings are developing with startling speed. In the New Territories the population is engaged 1