[iii]
(b) Health Officer of the Port. This officer would ordinarily not be avail-
able for other duties, but in times of emergency should be at the entire disposal of the Principal Medical Officer and at all times under his orders.
(e) Medical Officer in Charge of the Gaol, whose duties should also include a daily inspection of the Tung Wa Hospital. This Officer should like- wise be at all times under the orders of the Principal Medical Officer, and liable, when called upon, to assist at the Government Civil Hospital or available for any service at the discretion of the Principal Medical Officer.
Under the above arrangement we consider that many of the disadvantages of the present system would disappear. The Principal Medical Officer would have under his control a sufficient staff for the ordinary requirements of the Colony, and in the event of an officer falling sick or taking leave it would be open to him to distribute the duties of such officer amongst the remainder of the staff (taking his own share) without undue strain on any individual officer.
In addition to and independently of the above proposed medical staff proper, we recommend strongly the appointment of a Medical Officer of Health for the Colony vis-a-vis the Medical Officer of Health for the Port; but, unlike the latter officer, entirely independent of the control of the Principal Medical Officer. The Health Officer for the Colony should, in our opinion, have no connection whatever with the medical staff proper. His position should be quite distinct. He should be the medical adviser
of the Government on all sanitary matters through the Sanitary Board, to which he should be attached (not necessarily as a subordinate officer of the Board) and on which he should occupy a seat. He should however, in our opinion, be entitled to no vote, his duties on the Board being purely of an advisory nature, and it being obviously undesirable that he should enter into any discussion upon points on which he is called upon to advise.
We are not prepared to lay down definitely the specific duties that should be assigned to the proposed new officer; they must necessarily depend to a great extent on local conditions and circumstances, which are perhaps better known to the Government than to ourselves, but we consider that the duties performed by similar officers in some of our large towns at home should, mutatis mutandis, be assigned to the Health Officer for the Colony, and we append for the information of the Government a copy of the Appendix B. duties laid down by the Bradford Corporation for their Medical Officer of Health, * and Appendix can abstract of those performed by similar officers in the City of London, which it may
be found desirable to adapt to local requirements.
With regard to the qualifications requisite for the proposed office, we are strongly of opinion that the selected candidate should possess a public health diploma in addition to his ordinary medical degree. Ho should, in short, be an expert in all matters affecting the public health.
Question 2.-Whether the existing staff is sufficient to meet the ordinary require- ments of the Colony, and what special arrangements, if any, should be made in case of energency?
Answer.--We have already dealt with the first part of this question and expressed our opinion that under the re-arrangement proposed above the numerical strength of the staff is sufficient for the ordinary requirements of the Colony.
With regard to the latter half of the question, we have also provided above for cases of moderate emergency in recommending that the services of all members of the medical staff proper should be available for other than their ordinary duties, when necessity arises, and that the Principal Medical Officer shall have the power of appor-
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