PROPOSED NEW KWONG WAH HOSPITAL
ARCHITECT: MR. E. CUMINE. F.R. I. B. A.
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Photographs from the model.
years, successive
funds, that they are giving very serious consideration to his proposed scheme.
From Mr. Cumine's report of his inves- tigations of the hospital's requirements and how best to meet them, we cull the follow- ing notes:
Free hospital facilities in present day Hong Kong are bound to be inadequate. The demand is enormous. The architect's brief states a requirement of about 1,000 beds, which is as large a unit which can be handled without such a venture being unwieldy.
The Kwong Wah Hospital aims to be supported by voluntary contributions for free or nearly free hospitalisation for cer- tain groups. It is to be general in its scope of service, It will attempt to reduce a modern hospital to its barest essentials for such a service, avoiding expensive equipment or specialised treatments. will therefore not pretend to be a complete organisation. It will rely on Government in order that these simple services can be departments and certain facilities outside offered.
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(Above) The Waterloo Road elevation, (below) View from Dundas Street The Tung Wah Group of Hospitals is a Chinese methods and with Chinese herbs unique Hong Kong institution that pro- and medicines, Today, a large proportion bably finds no parallel anywhere else in of the patients are still treated that way, the world. This group of hospitals is ad- but in gradually decreasing numbers. ministered by Boards of Directors under
It will have simple radiological services, the Chairmanship of the Secretary for The Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon leaving the more involved services to, say, Chinese Affairs, drawn from well-to-do was badly damaged during the Japanese the Kowloon General Hospital. It is to be Chinese philanthropic business and profes- occupation and a great deal of re-habilita- medically a non-teaching hospital, although sional men who dedicate themselves to the tion work was done to enable it to con- the availability to students must be borne service of the relief of suffering amongst tinue its good work, so badly needed in mind. Nurses would be trained here in the poorest of the Chinese population.
amongst the poorer classes in Kowloon. order to avail itself of this form of labour It now finds it such a handicap working without which
be no hospital can in antiquated buildings, and the high cheaply. maintenance costs are becoming so great a
The present hospital is hopelessly inade- burden, that in order to continue effective-
quate and nothing short of a complete ly, it was considered necessary to rebuild transformation is going to be of any value. the entire hospital. Mr. Eric Cumine, who It is a feat of patience, endurance and has made a thorough study of the whole problem, has drawn up a tentative scheme organisation on the part of the Directors for new buildings which would utilise the and staff of this Hospital that it runs at very valuable site to the best advantage- a catalogue of despair.
all. Its struggles to succour the ailing is
A considerable amount of the funds for It is the architect's opinion that all the the building and running of the new hos present buildings except the Infirmary and pital would have to be found from charit- the Great Hall must be demolished. able contributions, and it is to the credit this includes the Nurses Home which is of the administrators that such is their still in sound condition. The way it is confidence in their ability to raise these now, it is a waste of land.
directorates have built up a system of hos pitals which operate on a purely charitable basis, until today the hospitals under their care administer to thousands annually, who would otherwise have no possible means of obtaining medical care.
These hospitals, the Tung Wah Hospital at Po Yan Street, Hong Kong which was founded in 1870; Tung Wah Eastern Hos- pital in Soo Kum Poo, Hong Kong: and Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon, to a very large extent are breaking down the original Chinese prejudice against Western medicine. They started originally as in- stitutions which treated patients by purely
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