PUBLIC HEALTH
107
In Appendix XII will be found a list of all hospitals in Hong Kong, government and private, with numbers of beds, the total numbers of registered doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, and a list of government medical personnel undergoing organized training.
URBAN SERVICES
The Urban Council, the organization and activities of which are described in the chapter on Administration, has statutory responsibilities for various public health measures in the urban area. The Chairman of the Council is also Director of the Urban Services Department, the Sanitary Division of which is responsible for the actual performance of public health activities in the urban area. The staff of the Division consists of 166 administrative, professional and technical officers, and 4,690 other workers. This includes a health inspectorate of 138 officers who have passed a Royal College of Health examination. The Division is sub-divided into interrelated sections dealing with sanitary maintenance of buildings and open spaces, pure food supplies, the establish- ment and control of public retail markets, the licensing and control of hawkers, the prevention and mitigation of disease, the collection and disposal of refuse, conservancy (disposal of nightsoil), disposal of the dead, and control of public swimming-beaches and life-saving.
Recurrent expenditure incurred by the Sanitary Division. of the Urban Services Department in 1955 amounted to nearly $14,000,000, of which over $12m. was wages.
16 fully-qualified meat and food inspectors will be re- quired for duty in the new abattoir which is to be constructed at Kennedy Town, and steps are being taken to train as many local men as possible in this type of work. In June four local officers returned, after qualifying, from the United Kingdom, and two more were sent in August to take the appropriate
course.
The system of house-inspection introduced last year, under which the health inspectorate personally advise tenants in cleaning methods and hygiene but leave them to cleanse their own premises, has been generally well-received by the public, and can now be said to be successful. This system replaced the long-established practice of quarterly house- cleansing, undertaken throughout most of the urban district by the Sanitary Division, and itself a relic of the days when