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HEALTH
District 'black-spot clean-ups' were held in April, May, September and October. Each of the 10 Urban Services districts in the urban areas (four on Hong Kong Island and six in Kowloon) carried out intensive localised operations to clean up black spots in their districts and maintain the campaign message to the public.
Also, the department was geared up for its main campaign effort of the 1974-5 financial year-a territory-wide campaign in early 1975 before Chinese New Year. This will include block-by-block inspection of buildings by teams of USD officers, and wholesale junk removal.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the campaign in 1974 was the emphasis on community involvement and education, with special efforts to arouse interest among schoolchildren in all matters related to environmental hygiene.
The hygiene staff, with health inspectors forming its backbone, are responsible for the maintenance of environmental sanitation and hygiene control of all premises licensed under the Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance. Regular inspections are carried out of domestic and licensed premises. During the year, 12,059 licensed premises, including those in the New Territories, were regularly inspected by health inspectors. The investigation of complaints of sanitary nuisances, of vermin infesta- tion, and of food poisoning cases and the control of infectious diseases are also carried out by the hygiene staff in close liaison with the Medical and Health Depart- ment. All applications for licences (other than hawker licences) issued under the Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance are dealt with by a central licensing unit to ensure that only premises that comply with the statutory standards of hygiene are granted licences.
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The health education section continued to organise publicity campaigns on various aspects of environmental health and also helped other government depart- ments and voluntary agencies in publicising various aspects of health and hygiene.
Training courses and talks on many topics of environmental health were held for specific groups of the public, such as food handlers, cadets of the Hong Kong Red Cross Society, St John Ambulance Association and also management personnel in multi-storey buildings.
To disseminate health knowledge and promote health education among school- children, various activities in the form of contests and competitions were organised jointly with the Education Department and voluntary agencies.
The food (import/export) section of the department provides highly necessary services for the control of imported meat, poultry, milk and frozen confections. To improve control over imported meat and poultry, a revised set of Imported Meat and Poultry Regulations has been proposed and is expected to be enacted shortly. During the year, a health certification section was set up to look after the export of food. In addition, this section deals with inspection and certification of animal products for export under veterinary certificate. For general overall control of food quality, regular surveys and scheduled sampling system have been carried out for chemical and bacteriological analysis to check composition and purity of food and