PUBLIC HEALTH
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also conduct health teaching on a large scale in schools, school clinics, and teachers' training colleges.
Immunization campaigns amongst the general public are organized by the epidemiological section of the Port Health Office and accompanied by propaganda through all available media. The large Resettlement Estates are especially fruitful ground for this work. In this connexion the loud-hailer van donated by the Rotary Club of Hong Kong some years ago continues to be invaluable, combining as it does the advantages of a loudly self-advertising inoculation centre, with mobility, which brings this service im- mediately to the people.
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OPHTHALMIC SERVICE
The Government Ophthalmic Service is based upon two major ophthalmic clinics in the urban area equipped with operating theatres, and investigation and treatment rooms, from which radiates out a specialist service to ten out-patient centres all of which are visited regularly. In addition, some thirty sessions are held monthly in the outlying dispensaries of the New Territories. The Service bases its policy on the realization that, as 75 per cent of the blindness in Hong Kong is preventable, there has to be brought to all parts of the Colony an effective specialist service fully integrated with the public health programmes.
The medical staff of the Government Ophthalmic Service con- sists of one Ophthalmic Specialist, six medical officers (ophthal- mologists), two almoners, one nursing sister, nine ophthalmic nurses, three ophthalmic male nurses, one dispenser, one health visitor, and five sight-testing or dispensing opticians.
The Tung Wah Group of Hospitals employs three part-time ophthalmologists who hold out-patient clinics once weekly with fortnightly operating sessions. The University of Hong Kong employs one part-time ophthalmologist for two sessions weekly. There are some fourteen other doctors in the Colony practising ophthalmology, mainly as refractionists in private practice. The specialists in ophthalmology of the Armed Services practise ophthalmology in their spare time as refractionists.
The two major Government Ophthalmic Clinics hold daily out- patient clinics, with attendances of over 500 persons at one clinic.