Highlights differences in neonatal diseases and social attitudes toward neonatal medicine between the East, exemplified by Hong Kong (or the “Pearl of the East”) and the West, encompassing Australia, Europe, and North America. Discussion covers errors of metabolism, chromosomal defects, and other inherited disorders, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, central nervous system, musculoskeletal, and hematological disorders, and infections and other conditions. Among the observations were that: (1) while cystic fibrosis is virtually nonexistent in Hong Kong, rates of such common defects as Down’s syndrome are similar to those found in the West; (2) annual respiratory syncytial virus outbreak occurs in late autumn in Europe and North America, whereas it is a year round phenomenon in Hong Kong; (3) the most common clinical problem in Chinese neonates is jaundice; and (4) resistance in the East to organ donation is a serious obstacle to transplant programs. On the topic of narcotic drug abuse,a social and medical problem that plagues East and West alike, there is an important difference: while most maternal drug abusers in Hong Kong are intravenous heroin addicts who frequently are involved in prostitution, the number of infants born to drug-addicted mothers remains lower than in North America and Europe.
