CO129-575-16 Tung Wah hospital 9-2-1939 - 17-11-1939 — Page 12

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(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