ENG-1963 — Page 184

9

Health

PUBLIC HEALTH ADMINISTRATION

STATUTORY responsibility for administering the services which safeguard public health in Hong Kong rests with the Director of Medical and Health Services, the Urban Council, the Director of Urban Services, the Commissioner of Labour and the District Commissioner, New Territories. The Medical and Health Depart- ment provides hospital and clinic facilities throughout both urban and rural areas, maintains maternal and child health, school health and port health services and is responsible for measures to control epidemic and endemic disease. In addition, doctors are seconded to the Urban Services Department, the industrial health section of the Labour Department and the prisons medical service. In the New Territories the District Commissioner is responsible for the licensing of slaughter-houses and offensive trades-other licensing functions previously held by the District Commissioner having been assumed by the Director of Urban Services.

Finance. The estimated expenditure of the Medical and Health Department for the financial year 1963-4 was $83,409,800. To this should be added medical subventions totalling $29,295,000 to the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, the Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital, the Hong Kong Anti-Tuberculosis Association, the Grantham Hospital, the Mission to Lepers (Hong Kong Auxiliary), the Pok Oi Hospital and other organizations and for the building of the new Kwong Wah Hospital. The combined estimated ex- penditure of the Medical and Health Department and the medical subventions represents 8.29 per cent of the Colony's total estimated expenditure of $1,360,040,510. Estimated capital expenditure for the Medical and Health Department was $30,348,700.

Professional Registers. There are five statutory bodies dealing with the registration of medical practitioners, dentists, pharmacists,