CO129-571-18 League of Nations- medical aid for China and reduced cable rates 8-2-1938 - 30-1-1939 — Page 38

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appointing the better qualified nurses to posts usually

occupied by junior medicel officers. The fact that the

severely wounded largely fail to come down to the rear

means, however, that most of the hospitals in the rear are

filled with light or moderate cases. Nevertheless, inadequate

and unsound treatment gives rise to chronic sepsis, especially ostemyelitis, contractures and unnecessary deformation and to undue prolongation in the period of

recovery.

Poverty and furnishings, equipment and supplies and meagreness of operating funds on the one had, and the incompetency of the hospital rank and file recruited mostly from uneducated levels of the people on the other hand, often combine to make of the hospitals wretched shelters, as unsanitary, unclean and comfortless as the houses to which the majority of the staff are accustomed.

These defects are realized by the Army Medical Administration, but no great change can be effected until a sufficient numbe. of trained personnel are available to

carry out the desired reformation. The Aray Medical Administra- tion runs an Aray Medical College for the technical education of medical officers, but the Coll ge do ́s not undertake the training of under officers and men. However, a beginnin: of medicel training of all ranks, in certain field centres, has now been instituted, and advantage is being taken of the Weishengshu mergency medical Service Training School for the same purpose. The only drawback the limited facilities of the Training School.

While such trainin will improve the quality of the pe. sonnel especially that of the lower ranks, and can provide on expansion new cadres in adequate numbers, 1 will not remedy the shortage of officers (doctors) who cannot be educated in less than five or six years. To scoure additional

qualified