CO129-594-8 A G H Sment- report on medical activities and problems 16-12-1945 - 18-2-1946 — Page 24

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certain selected groups of the population, mainly Government employees. There are included school children and specially vulnerable groups, such as parturient women and labourers. The survey is not a big one but its results should afford useful information, although the findings will be prejudiced somewhat by rapidly changing conditions.. The idea is to use these results as a basis for investigating wage

arnings in the light of purchasing value and increasing wages or reducing prices to secure better living conditions. The main deficiencies found so far relate to vitamin B. but evidences of other deficiencies are not uncommon.

Helminthic infections have already been referred to. They seem almost universal amongst children. Hookworm infection is said not to be very prevalent but an investigation amongst certain groups of the population might disclose a higher prevalence than is suspected. Scabies is a considerable problem as it is in other Colonies. Various eye diseases occur but apparently trachoma is not more than ordinarily prevalent, although more might have been expected under conditions of overcrowding and after poor feeding with lowered resistance. Reference is made in an earlier section (1) to the desirability of an orthopaedic specialist visiting Hong Kong, having in view the wide occurrence of physical disability and orthopaedic defects in the Colony.

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Fortunately, at the present time, epidemic disease is absent. Cholera and bowel diseases generally occur during the hot weather but epidemic smallpox occurs in the winter. Typhoid fevers are not specially prevalent during this season but there are probably many carriers amongst the community. While diphtheria is. occurring at the present, it has not become the problem that has shown up in many countries following enemy occupation.

This section only concerns the prevalency of disease; a later section will deal with the position in regard to measures of control.

4.

MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS

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Government and other Medical Institutions in Hong Kong are referred to on pages 37 to 58 of the Wellington Review. There is also the Report of the Hospitals Committee appointed just before the war, which it will be useful to restudy in the light of events occurring since its publication. The Committee recommended the apportionment of five beds per thousand of the population for general purposes as a target to be aimed at. Colonel Fehily estimates that he now has available, nearly available, an all-in total of 3,785 beds for all purposes for a population figure estimated by the Hospitals Committee at 1,250,000. The position, however, is complicated by the fact that two floors of the Queen Mary Hospital are loaned to the R. N. Authorities, leaving only 250 beds, out of total of 550, available for Civil Administration and that a certain proportion of this total accommodation is in buildings that require conditioning before being put into use.

The contrast between the condition of the accommodation used by the Naval Authorities and the Civil Administration at the Queen Mary Hospital is marked. The former have all the staff and material that they want. Most of their equipment and furniture was conveyed, as a complete hospital unit, from their headquarters at Brisbane. Civil Affairs Administration have had literally nothing except what they took over, and have had to improvise all along. this exceedingly well and the position is surely, if slowly, assuming a brighter

They have done

complexion. Complete restoration, however, must await the arrival of the United Kingdom units.

Hospital and other Medical institutional development will follow the lines of the Committee's recommendations in so far as these were approved by the Secretary of State. The first essential to medical planning is that there should be a more or less fixed figure of population upon which to base medical accommodation and requirements.

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Child Welfare Centres, dispensaries and special clinics, many of which I have visited, are all being rapidly re-established and are bringing much relief to a care-starved people. The popularity of these institutions is evident and it is quite apparent that the bulk of the population have learnt to appreciate Western medicine and trust those who administer it:· Daily, on going round, I have been impressed by the quality of the work that has been accomplished by the respective Heads of the Medical Department, and by the wise and careful planning that is apparent on every hand.

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