SOCIAL WELFARE
205
over 4,500 people received a free cooked meal every day at one of the six departmental welfare centres and some 5,420 shares of dry rations were distributed regularly to about 2,660 families to be cooked at home. The recipients were the physically handicapped, the sick (particularly sufferers from tuberculosis and their families), widows with dependent children, and others who were shown on detailed inquiry to be unable to support themselves, whether tem- porarily or permanently.
The North Point Relief Camp, the only Government institution with accommodation for the destitute and disabled and their de- pendants, provided limited indoor relief. The average population of the camp was between 350 and 410 and the turnover about 45 per month.
Voluntary welfare organizations played an important part in the work of public assistance. The Lutheran World Service gave_free medical treatment to many needy persons, particularly refugees, supplied some 80,000 people a month with supplementary food- stuffs through eleven centres in the urban area, and gave a number of cash grants. Church World Service and the Catholic Welfare Committee of China both distributed food on a large scale; the former helped to finance a variety of relief projects, while the latter assisted welfare clinics with part of their medical supplies. C.A.R.E. (Co-operative for American Relief to Everywhere, Inc.) financed a number of self-help projects and distributed some 453,000 food parcels.
The quantity of surplus foodstuffs from the United States which entered Hong Kong during 1959 for distribution locally by these and other organizations amounted to some 22,000 tons; this con- sisted of wheatflour, cornmeal, broken rice, milk powder and beans. Some of these foodstuffs, notably wheatflour, cornmeal and powdered milk, being both comparatively strange to local palates and not very easy to prepare in appetizing form, are of dubious popularity. A number of voluntary bodies, notably Catholic Relief Services, have therefore installed locally made machinery to con- vert these foodstuffs, including a proportion of milk powder, into noodles before distribution. Noodles are almost a staple ingredient in local diets, and as such are widely acceptable. This scheme has proved most successful.