1.
PERSONNEL
1
20
C One of Col. Fehily's urgent needs is additional technical staff. The Civil Establishment in normal times is given on page 24 of Wellington Review and compared with that he is short in, many respects. He is comparatively well off in regard to cally recruited staff and the position is improving daily; it is in respect of nited Kingdom recruited staff that he is specially deficient. His most urgent need is for trained Health Officers. The peacetime establishment was eleven and he had asked for five in the Civil Affairs set-up. At the present moment he has no Health Officers. This creates a situation full of risk. By far the most important medical problem in Hong Kong is that of health .control. With unlimited immigration permitted as a matter of higher policy there is always in Hong Kong the menace of disease being imported. There is no quarantine camp or Port Health Service to deal with persons arriving by sea or by air, neither are coolies entering the Colony by the land frontiers from the mainland, or by ferry or small craft, subject to any examina- tion or control. Overcrowding in urban areas, especially in Victoria, is already occurring and conditions there are as bad as those to be found anywhere in the Colonies. In addition, the population is suffering from the effects of four years of rigorous occupation and only now are people beginning to recover normal health and build up resistance to disease. Moreover, sanitary control and supervision under existing conditions is difficult. The necessary staff is not available and buildings are dilapidated, while the control of nightsoil disposal is precarious. Drainage systems are out of repair and there is a great shortage of latrine buckets. All these factors make it a matter of urgency to have adequate skilled supervisory staff to re-establish more normal conditions at the earliest possible moment.
Colonel Fehily places as No. two essential the engagement of a Veterinary Officer.
Transmissible There is no need to emphasize the need for such an officer. disease from animal sources is always potentially present in a hot climate and there are no means of training local candidates as Veterinary Officers, although Sanitary Inspectors receive the usual, but very limited, training in the inspection of meat and other foods. At the moment, one private practitioner is employed part-time as Veterinary Officer but he is an ex-internee and leaves the Colony very shortly.
The
United Kingdom recruited Sanitary Inspectors are also badly wanted. position at present is that there are two Chief Sanitary Inspectors who have been. re-employed, with two acting Senior Inspectors belonging to the peacetime establishment. Under the Civil Affairs. Administration scheme. Colonel Fehily asked for four Senior Sanitary Inspectors in addition to the above staff, none of whom has turned up. He has emphasized the urgent need for this staff, especially having in view obliga- tions under the International Sanitary Conventions. He has, however, received nine British other ranks as Sanitary Inspectors and they will help to relieve the situa- tion. These men have not the qualifications required for civil Sanitary Inspectors. Colonel Fehily also requested the services of an additional four ordinary grade Sanitary Inspectors, three of whom should have qualification in meat and food inspection. None of these has yet arrived.
Colonel Fehily is handicapped greatly through lack of qualified clerical assistance. In the Civil Affairs establishment for the military period there were included posts for two Staff Captains, one of them to be personal secretary to the D.D.M.S. and the other to keep him right on the military aspects of his work;
At the moment all he has, apart neither of these officers has been made available. from ordinary clerks, whose capacity is limited owing to the privations they have gone through, is the assistance of a Chief Clerk who has been taken back after retirement and is past his best. As a matter of longer term policy, Colonel Fehily requires the assistance of one secretary with two assistant secretaries, one with statistical experience, the former and one of the latter to be recruited from the United Kingdom,
There is also an urgent need for an additional qualified Pharmaceutical Chemist; one has arrived but he needs assistance.
The staff of Nursing Sister's under the Civil Administration was limited to five when I first came to Hong Kong but since then about sixty Queen Alexandria sisters have arrived, Colonel Fehily keeps his principal matron at headquarters and she acts as superintendent of the nursing establishment as a whole.
42878-1
3
Page 20Page 21