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Health
PUBLIC HEALTH ADMINISTRATION
STATUTORY responsibility for the services which safeguard public health in Hong Kong is divided between the Director of Medical and Health Services, the Urban Council, the Director of Urban Services, and the Commissioner of Labour. The Medical and Health Department provides hospital and clinic facilities through- out both urban and rural areas; maintains maternal and child health, school health and port health services; and is responsible for measures to control epidemic and endemic disease. Doctors are seconded to the Urban Services Department, the Industrial Health Section of the Labour Department, and the Prisons medical service.
The Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance, 1960, con- solidated and revised the legislation governing environmental and food hygiene and public amenities. The Urban Council, through the Urban Services Department, continues to be the authority for these matters in the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon, but the Ordinance provides for gradual transfer of the corresponding statutory powers and functions in the rural areas from the District Commissioner, New Territories to the Director of Urban Services. This transfer has already begun.
The policy of Government is to provide, directly or indirectly, either free or at low cost, medical and personal health services to that large section of the community which is unable to seek medical attention from other sources. To this end it maintains general, maternity, mental and infectious disease hospitals and general and specialized out-patient clinics. Substantial grants-in-aid are given from public funds to certain voluntary associations and medical missionary bodies who maintain hospitals where treatment is either free or at low cost, such grants normally being calculated to meet the excess of expenditure over income. In some hospitals