97
whom
The
patients, and to overcome this the ministry was trying to
encourage hospitals to run family beds in households.
problem of AIDS was raised and we were told that, to date,
there were three cases of Chinese with the disease all of
(predictably?) had returned to China from overseas.
However, there were also 500 cases of AIDS in the south
western provinces e.g. Yunnan, who had become infected by
injections (of drugs). The ministry had formed a working
group which was liaising with international organizations
to tackle the problen. As with all the briefings with the
the officials spoke openly and
technical ministries,
frankly about their problems and were genuinely interested
in Hong Kong health care policies.
20.
the.
In the
we
afternoon, following the briefing,
visited the Peking Hospital near Tiananmen Square. As with
Social Welfare Institution, this was very much a show
piece, and was too clean and uncrowded to be true! All the
wards we visited had several unoccupied beds and, during
our briefing, more emphasis seened to be given to the
hospital's acquisition of very high technology medical
equipment than patient care. It was explained that this
hospital had a special status being one of two hospitals in
Peking directly
under the ministry's control and, as such,
could be expected to have the best.