REVIEW
5
This was really a continuation of pre-war policy which did not provide large-scale government curative services; indeed the general population was then still much inclined to rely upon traditional Chinese remedies. High priority was given to the development of quarantine and epidemiological services to contain epidemic diseases, particularly smallpox and cholera. At the same time, tuberculosis and maternal and child health services were seen to be of the utmost importance. It was inevitable that the very heavy stress laid on these aspects of medical provision should lead to the progressive overload- ing of the general hospital and outpatient services. The only major hospital opened by the government between 1945 and 1957 was a maternity hospital of 200 beds, which opened in 1954 and provided facilities for the treatment of complicated cases and for the training of medical students and midwives in normal midwifery. Planning for the provision of beds for normal midwifery in government out- patient clinics had been initiated and it was intended that these, together with private maternity homes, should provide a near suffi- ciency of maternity beds for normal midwifery, since housing con- ditions in Hong Kong were not suitable for the general practice of domiciliary midwifery. It was envisaged that these facilities, linked with the maternal and child health services, would contribute materially to a decrease in both maternal and infantile mortality. Additional hospital beds for the treatment of tuberculosis were also provided, with three sanatoria and one convalescent home being built between 1949 and 1957. But despite this, and while plans for a new mental hospital and a large general hospital were in process of production, the overall bed' population rate had receded from 2.8 per thousand in 1946 to 2.25 per thousand in 1956.
Basic social welfare services were in being on a limited scale prior to 1956, but as yet no separate department existed to direct the programme. Nor were the activities of the voluntary agencies, valuable as they were, as effectively co-ordinated as they were later to be. The Social Welfare Office, as it then was, had statutory responsibilities for the protection of women and girls and in the probation field. It was also actively engaged in providing and spon- soring clubs for boys and girls who were unable to find places in primary schools. But to many people the work of the department was synonymous with the issue of relief in the form of dry rations and cooked meals, for in the approach to social work in 1956