9
Wednesday, October 17, 1973
would make in terms of money and trained personnel. The Committee has
completed and submitted its report, and this will be laid before this
Council at our next meeting as a green paper. The Committee's recommondations
and any views expressed on them by the public and professional bodies
will be studied very carefully by the Government.
consideration early next year we shall lay before the Executive Council
and Legislative Council a firm programme for development over the course
of the next ten years.
In the light of this
I have counted some twenty main recommendations in the report.
I have time today to refer only to a few. Next year we shall reach and
pass the target of 4.25 beds for one thousand population set in 1964.
The Advisory Committee now recommend a new and higher target of 5.5 beds
to each thousand members of the population by 1983. This would involve providing
an additional 8,250 beds over and above the 3,000 already in the pipe line. That
this is a formidable target neither the Committee nor the Government doubt, partic-
ularly at a time when the scale of development in other fields will be making great
demands on our resources. Clearly we are obliged to consider with care the
various possible methods by which the target may be reached, and we must
decide quickly. We will need some more hospitals, but we will also have to
contrive the fullest use of beds already available in Government and assisted
hospitals.
The report warna us that by the end of the decade we will need each
year 100 more doctors than are being produced at present; that a dental
school should be established so as to provide about 60 dentists each year
from 1980 onwards; and that we should be planning now a further training
school capable of taking 150 to 200 student nurses a year. Those recommendations
/have far ..............