REVIEW
11
The main aims of the 1963-72 plan were to institute a network of clinics supported by specialist and large hospital facilities, in- crease the number of hospital beds per thousand of the population from 2.91 in 1963 to 4.25 in 1972, and maintain and increase the preventive coverage and defence. One standard outpatient clinic was seen to be necessary for each 100,000 of the urban population and each 50,000 in the New Territories, providing in the same building not only an outpatient clinic but a maternal and child health clinic and a 24-bed maternity home. Supporting such clinics were to be specialist outpatient clinics and polyclinics, on the basis of one to 500,000, together with the major hospitals. Another new accent in medical policy is the distinction being emphasized between the highly specialized acute bed, which naturally costs most to maintain, and the sub-acute and infirmary beds, which can be provided in greater numbers more economically, so as to accelerate the turnover in the acute beds in specialized hospitals.
The government itself built the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the largest acute general hospital in the British Commonwealth, together with Castle Peak Mental Hospital, and the South Lantau Rural Hospital. These between them provide 2,518 beds. It has also undertaken an extensive modernization and extension programme at Queen Mary Hospital on Hong Kong Island, which serves as the Colony's teaching hospital, at Castle Peak Mental Hospital, and at Kowloon Hospital, which now plays a subsidiary role to the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This programme, which will not be finally completed until after 1966, will yield another 1,200 beds.
During this period, the government has also subsidized both the building and running costs of 10 mission and voluntary association hospitals, which yielded about 3,800 further beds. Notable amongst these are the Tung Wah Group's new 1,500-bed Kwong Wah Hospital in Kowloon, which is amongst the biggest and best equipped in Asia, and its Sandy Bay and Wong Tai Sin Infirmaries, the Hong Kong Anti-Tuberculosis Association's Grantham Hospital of 614 beds, the Haven of Hope Tuberculosis Sanitorium, the Mary- knoll Hospital and the Caritas Medical Centre. Rehabilitation, - especially of industrial injuries, orthopaedic diseases and other handicaps in children, is provided by the Kwun Tong Centre, run by the Hong Kong Rehabilitation Society, the Society for the