Paterson - advocate of hospital without walls
Superintendent set up community nursing without official support
One of the key figures in Hong Kong's health services sector, Dr Edward Hamilton Paterson, died on Saturday at the age of 92.
Paterson was medical superintendent at the Nethersole Hospital and then at the United Christian Hospital from the 1960s to 1980s.
He and his wife retired from Hong Kong in 1989 and have lived in Taunton, England since. He was hospitalised for a chest infection shortly before he died.
Paterson was known for advocating a "hospital without walls" - improving people's health within the community.
As medical superintendent of the United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong, he set up health centres in housing estates and obtained funds for community nursing, although the concept had not been accepted by the government at first.
"We felt that unless some attempt was made to 'turn off the tap' - to reduce significantly the load of sickness generated in the community and raise the health level of the people - the hospital's services could never be more than a heroic rearguard holding action against the flood of ill health," Paterson wrote in the British Medical Journal in January 1980. Paterson was awarded the degree of Doctor of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong in 1985.