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PERSONNEL.
لله
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 locally recruited staff and the position is improving daily; it is in respect of U.K. 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 examination 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. 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.
In
Col. Fehily places as No. two essential the engagement of a veterinary Officer. There is no need to emphasize the need for such an officer. Transmissible disease from animal sources is always potentially present in a hot climate and there are no means of training local candidates as Veterinary officers, althoughsanitary 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.
U.K. recruited Sanitary Inspectors are also badly wanted. The 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, Col. 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
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