health objective. A very wide field is covered by many branches of the Medical & Health Department while certain other departments are also concerned with various aspects of the subject in their respective spheres, Pooting of experience and co-ordination of effort are obvious necessities and so an Inter-departmenual Committee on Health Education has been created. This committee, to which reference has previously been made in connexion with the anti-diphtheria campaign, consists of representa- tives from the Departments of Education. Labour, Urban Services, Information Services, and Resettlement, and from the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs and the District Administration, New Territories, under the chairmanship of the Assistant Director of Health Services.
249. All available methods are used in the various health education programmes undertaken by the Department with varying success. Pro- grammes based on methods designed for individual or group education have in general proved satisfactory, being used with success by the Maternal and Child Health Service, the Tuberculosis Service, the School Health Service and the Social Hygiene Service. On the other hand, mass campaigns directed towards widespread utilization of the facilities offered for prophylactic immunization against certain diseases are given a somewhat apathetic reception and have to be supplemented, as has been described in paragraph 96 on diphtheria, by various measures designed to make such prophylaxis available as close to the home as possible.
250. The co-operation of all voluntary bodies interested in health topics is actively encouraged, and during the year talks on such matters were given by members of the Department to Kaifong Associations, Welfare Societies, and similar organizations,
IV. THE WORK OF THE MEDICAL DIVISION
HOSPITALS
251. During the next five years the programme of hospital con- struction by Government, by the Tung Wah Hospitals Board of Directors, and by missionary bodies will result in seven new hospitals accommodating 3,872 beds. In addition, extensions to existing hospitals will add a further 318 beds to this total. The details in Table 22 give an indication of the phasing of this building programme which is estimated to cost $135.637,000 of which $124,537,000 will be from public funds.
New construction
TABLE 22
1960 1961 1962
Queen Elizabeth Hospital
1963 1964
1.320
Kwong Wah Hospital
1,230
Canossan Hospital
203
"Castle Peak Hospital
1,000
Maryknoll Hospital
50
Lutheran Hospital
$2
South Lantao Hospital
17
GB
50
Extensions
Kowloon Hospital
Pok Of Hospital
†Queen Mary Hospital
* Meretat Hospital,
BE
* Approved in principle but construction mor surted.
200
252. To staff this number of beds over a period of five years is an undertaking of considerable magnitude and a programme for the training of doctors and nurses has been under way for some time. Trained nursing staff is likely to be the limiting factor and therefore priority in the construction of teaching and residential accommodation has been essential. A School of Nursing for the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals was opened in January 1960 and work on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital School of Nursing is well advanced. This latter School with residential accommodation for 562 sisters, staff nurses and student nurses will be opened in September 1960. At the Castle Peak Mental Hospital a course of training in Mental Nursing will start towards the end of 1960 but meantime there has been an intake of student mental nurses to the existing Victoria Mental Hospital, using the Queen Mary Hospital Preliminary Training School facilities for this part of the
course.
253. At the Kowloon Hospital a new block containing two operating suites each with two theatres and two surgical wards of 34 beds each will be put into use in April, 1960. The pressure on the Kowloon Hospital surgical beds has been such that the theatre facilities were totally inadequate to deal with the emergency surgery let alone other essential operative work. Therefore this new surgical block, which can be used for thoracic surgery when Kowloon Hospital becomes a tuber- culosis hospital, has been built to give some relief, pending the com- pletion of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital,
254. The pressure on the Maternity Wards has also been acute and a temporary ward of 36 beds was completed and opened in September, 1959.
60
60
41