ENG-1961 — Page 188

HEALTH

153

In September, with the full support of Government, the Hong Kong Dental Society sponsored the Colony's first Dental Health Week. Lectures, films and puppet shows were attended by children and adults throughout the Colony. These, together with special radio and television features, were designed to give the population a better appreciation of the importance of dental health and oral hygiene.

TRAINING

Facilities are available in the Colony for the training of most categories of medical and medical auxiliary personnel. Heavy demands are made on these facilities owing to the great expansion of curative and preventive services which has already occurred and which will continue over the next few years.

Doctors. Undergraduate training is carried out at the University of Hong Kong which confers the degrees of MB, BS, which_have been recognized by the General Medical Council of the United Kingdom since 1911.

Post-graduate clinical training is available in the Colony for higher qualifications awarded by most of the examining bodies in Great Britain. The Panel on Post-graduate Medical Education, consisting of University and Government staff members, supervises this training and advises on both general and individual aspects of the programme. It is mainly due to this programme that 72% of the specialist appointments in the Medical and Health are now held by locally-recruited staff and that there is a progressive in- crease in the number of medical officers who have been able to obtain higher qualifications in various branches of medical science.

Dentistry. Hong Kong has no local facilities for training in dentistry and although the proposal to establish a Faculty of Dental Science at the University has been approved in principle it has not yet been possible to allocate high priority to it. In the mean- time, a Government Dental Scholarship Scheme each year enables a number of students from Hong Kong to study dentistry overseas and ultimately to qualify as dental surgeons.

Nurses. The opening of the Government School of Nursing in 1960 on a site adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kowloon doubled the facilities for the training of general medical