A New Era Begins 1975-78

Addendum: On Medical Education The Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Choh-Ming Li's speech at the Seminar on Recent Developments in Medical Education on 6th July, 1978: The Chinese University of Hong Kong is relatively young: only fifteen years of age. It is impossible to talk about development of the University in the past quarter of a century, let alone Medical Education in this institution, which is still in an embryonic stage. We have, nevertheless, invited you to this Seminar, in order to attempt what the Chinese call “casting a brick in order to draw a jewel", meaning to make an inexpensive offer and hope for a rewarding return. For we are sure to learn a lot from your experience and expertise when you discourse on recent developments in Medical Education in your countries; and we shall use this valuable exchange to help planning our new Medical School. What I propose to do is to start the ball rolling by giving you an account of our development plan for this new school: how it came about, how far we have progressed, and what sort of medical education we intend to offer. I will begin with the factors that lead to the decision to establish our Medical School. It is a traditional Chinese metaphysical principle that it takes the ‘yin’ and the ‘yang’matched together to give birth to all things under the sun. Our Medical School is similarly engendered from two driving forces—internal and external. First the internal force. With our 333-acre campus and a student number of over 4,000, there is room for further development. The addition of a new Faculty of Business Administration in 1974 was a step towards internal development, as well as meeting a community need. The next step is obviously to launch medical education, which will satisfy the aspirations of this University both to render more service to the community and to develop further. As early as 1974 ， when I reported on the progress of this University from 1970 to 1974 ， I had expressed our intention to enter into the medical field. We were then psychologically and physically prepared to set up a Medical School. The external force is the necessity for establishing a second Medical School, as stipulated in the White Paper on the Further Development of Medical & Health Services published in 1974 ， which is in effect the development plan for the decade 1973-1982. It recommended the building of four more hospitals, thus raising the hospital bed: population ratio from 4.25 to 5.5 per thousand, and a number of clinics in the developing townships. It was also proposed to regionalize the medical and health services, with Hong Kong divided into 5 regions, each with a regional hospital, a number of district hospitals, including some government- assisted hospitals, specialist and general clinics. It was estimated that an additional 100 doctors per year would be required to provide 49