12
(1) Accommodation and treatment by Western or
9.
herbal medicine of the sick poor.
(2) The care and provision for the senile and
indigent.
(3) Maternity and child welfare service for
the poor.
(4) Free vaccination against smallpox and
inoculation against cholera.
(5) Provision of coffins and burial of the
dead.
(6) Training schools for nurses and midwives.
The Sino-Japanese hostilities with the consequent
influx of refugees to the Colony have had very far reaching
effects on Chinese Hospitals and when it is remembered
that the total number of beds in the three hospitals is
just under 1,100 the figures given in the attached Table
are almost unbelievable. In the early months of 1938 it
became apparent that the accommodation in these hospitals
was taxed to the uttermost, and some scheme for the
immediate relief of the dangerous congestion had to be
evolved. It was thought that if a proportion of the
patients suffering from chronic curable maladies requiring prolonged hospitalisation could be transferred to another
building, (equipped on the lines of a convalescent home rather than as a modern hospital), then space and oppor-
tunity would be made for the care and treatment of the
crowds of sick and dying who daily thronged the admission
wards of the Tung Wah Hospitals. Government, therefore,
decided to convert Lai Chi Kok Prison, which had been
closed when the new prison at Stanley was built, into a
Chinese Relief Hospital for the accommodation of patients
from the Tung Wah group with chronic but curable illnesses,
particularly