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Polytechnic Grants Committee. Planning for a second medical school and a dental school is starting this
year.
(b) The Hong Kong Polytechnic (a new institution) will have
increased from 1834 equivalent full-time students in September 1972, to 9,800 by 1977/78: and it is expected to build up to 12,400 by 1979/80.
(c) The capacity in teacher-training colleges is now 3,650
and, on present plans, is unlikely to require to be increased.
MEDICAL AND HEALTH SERVICES
13. Only nominal fees for consultations, including prescriptions, etc, of HK$f, and of $3 per day in hospital (with provision for total remission where necessary) are charged. Today Hong Kong is free from quarantinable disease, the average life expectancy is 71.7 years, the second highest in Asia and comparable with the developed countries of the West. Over the last fifteen years infant mortality per 1,000 live births has dropped from 41.5 to 15; maternal mortality from 0.49 to 0.03; and TB deaths per 100,000 from 67.8 to 14.8.
14. There is still overcrowding in some hospitals in the old urban areas, there are insufficient beds for psychiatric and geriatric patients and provision must be made for the New Towns.
A plan for the expansion of Medical and Health services was published in the 1974 White Paper. A new hospital for 1,300 will come into full operation in this financial year, further hospitals for 1,300; 200; 1,200; and 1,200 will open in 1979/80; 1980/81; 1982/83; and 1983/84 respectively, the latter two to provide for the requirements of the new towns now being built at Shatin and Tuen Mun. This programme, coupled with the provision of some beds in most clinics will raise the proportion of beds per thousand population from 4.1 to 4.8 in 1983/84. The hospital building programme is being supplemented by the steady construction of general and specialised clinics of which 8 more will be opened between 1976/77 and 1979/80. Apart from increased supply resulting from the opening
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