British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 618

CHAPTER XVI.

This policy has permitted the Department, at a comparatively small total expenditure when compared with that of other countries, to devote the greater part of its energies to the reduction of preventable diseases, to improving, more especially in towns, the general sanitary and health conditions and to the medical supervision of school children and infant welfare.

21. Owing, however, to periods of financial stringency in the past, the medical policy has not yet been fully carried out. It has not been possible to provide sufficient medical aid and hospital accommodation in certain localities, notably Ramleh, Jenin and Acre and in certain areas where close settlement has taken place. The ratio of general hospital beds available for every thousand of the population is still approximately 2.5, Jews usually occupying some three to the Arabs' two. In general the demand for hospitalisation is high in Palestine, as compared with other dependencies under British administration; at present the accommodation reflected in these ratios fails to meet this demand. The increasing insistence of the Arab demand for hospital treatment has been a marked feature of recent years. Little hospital or sanatorium provision has yet been made for tuberculosis, and the provision of infant welfare and maternity centres is admittedly inadequate in a country having a high infantile mortality rate.

22. The manner in which the functions of the Department of Health are discharged, in accordance with the policy briefly stated in paragraph 3 above and the Public Health Ordinance 1940*, is described in the following sub-sections :-

(i) To provide general hospital accommodation and out-patient clinics for the poor of the urban and rural populations when insufficient voluntary hospital accommodation exists, for Government officers and employees, police and prisoners and for medico-legal and accident cases.

The Department maintains general and infectious hospitals in Jerusalem, Haifa, Nablus , Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Beersheba and Gaza, and infectious diseases hospitals at Safad, Jerusalem and Bnei Beraq. It undertakes the inspectorial supervision of the Tel Aviv municipal hospital under the terms of the annual grant-in-aid. The construction of a new Government general and infectious diseases hospital building at Haifa was begun in 1937 and completed in 1938. It has a bed strength of 261 but is planned for eventual extension to 450.

The accommodation available in 1945 for general cases at these hospitals was as follows :-
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* Vol. I, or 1940 legislation, page 239.

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