ENG-1965 — Page 148

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HEALTH

maintain free or low-cost dental clinics and many dentists give their services free. The Church World Service, the Lutheran World Service and Caritas operate fully equipped mobile dental clinics.

OPHTHALMIC SERVICE

Based upon two full-time outpatient centres equipped with operating, investigation and treatment rooms, this service operates on a sessional basis in the urban areas and in the outlying districts of the New Territories. In 1953, 80 per cent of the blind population of the Colony had become blind before reaching the age of 10. With the application of modern drugs, special attention to the condition of avitaminosis and free treatment to those under 12 years, the position is now comparable with conditions in advanced countries with the onset of blindness in 80 per cent of cases occur- ring after the age of 50.

TRAINING

The University of Hong Kong confers the degrees of MB, BS and these have been recognized for registration 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; a panel for post- graduate medical education, consisting of university and govern- ment staff members, supervises this training. Due mainly to this programme over three-quarters of the specialist appointments in the Medical and Health Department are now held by locally- recruited staff. Facilities at the university and at the Queen Mary Hospital are being expanded to increase the number of graduates from 50 to 80 a year.

Hong Kong has no local facilities for training in dentistry but a government dental scholarship scheme each year enables a num- ber of students from Hong Kong to study dentistry overseas and ultimately to qualify as dental surgeons.

There are three government hospital schools of nursing. Those at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the Queen Mary Hospital are general schools, while that at the Castle Peak Hospital is a psychiatric nursing school. Training is in English at these schools but there are approved schools also at the Tung Wah hospitals,