TNAG-2293-FCO40-3305-Official-visits-from-Hong-Kong-to-China-1991 — Page 147

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whom

The

patients, and to overcome this the ministry was trying to

encourage hospitals to run family beds in households.

problem of AIDS was raised and we were told that, to date,

there were three cases of Chinese with the disease all of

(predictably?) had returned to China from overseas.

However, there were also 500 cases of AIDS in the south

western provinces e.g. Yunnan, who had become infected by

injections (of drugs). The ministry had formed a working

group which was liaising with international organizations

to tackle the problen. As with all the briefings with the

the officials spoke openly and

technical ministries,

frankly about their problems and were genuinely interested

in Hong Kong health care policies.

20.

the.

In the

we

afternoon, following the briefing,

visited the Peking Hospital near Tiananmen Square. As with

Social Welfare Institution, this was very much a show

piece, and was too clean and uncrowded to be true! All the

wards we visited had several unoccupied beds and, during

our briefing, more emphasis seened to be given to the

hospital's acquisition of very high technology medical

equipment than patient care. It was explained that this

hospital had a special status being one of two hospitals in

Peking directly

under the ministry's control and, as such,

could be expected to have the best.