The Birth of Hong Kong’s Second Medical Faculty: The Founding of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine and Founding Dean Gerald Choa (1977–1981)

This article is a factual archive from the reference section (11 Medicine), without credibility badges. Each claim is supported by official or secondary sources. It focuses on the founding history and the founding dean of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine, complementing 11-medical-hospital/faculty-of-medicine.md (faculty structure overview) and prince-of-wales-and-sars.md (teaching hospital clinical history). The founding dean is deceased; names are recorded faithfully from public records.

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# 1. Hong Kong’s ‘Second Medical Faculty’

Before the establishment of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine, Hong Kong had only one medical school: the University of Hong Kong’s medical faculty, which began in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine. For nearly a century, higher medical education in Hong Kong operated on a “one city, one school” model. The founding of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine ended this single-institution pattern — it became Hong Kong’s second medical faculty. According to the English Wikipedia entry ‘CUHK Faculty of Medicine’^※ and the CUHK Faculty of Medicine milestones page^※, the Legislative Council approved the establishment of a medical school at CUHK in 1974, and the faculty completed its basic infrastructure and enrolled its first undergraduate cohort in 1981.

The significance of being ‘second’: For a densely populated city, having only one medical school created a bottleneck in training healthcare professionals. Hong Kong’s population grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, and the public healthcare system’s demand for doctors and nurses surged — one medical school alone could not meet the need. The establishment of CUHK’s medical faculty not only added a major centre for medical education and research but also opened a second pipeline of talent into the local healthcare system. From that point on, medical education in Hong Kong entered an era of two parallel medical faculties — a configuration that persists to this day, with CUHK and HKU remaining the only two universities in Hong Kong with medical schools.

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# 2. After Legislative Council Approval: The Interim Period 1974–1977

Founding a medical faculty is not a matter of “approval granted, school ready.” According to the Faculty’s official ‘Milestones’ page^※, after the government and Legislative Council gave the green light in 1974, the University immediately faced a practical problem: who would turn this approval into a functioning medical school? The preparatory work was immense — choosing a site, constructing buildings, designing the curriculum, securing a teaching hospital, recruiting qualified faculty, and gaining recognition from professional bodies. The University laid some preliminary groundwork between 1974 and 1977, but true overall coordination had to await the arrival of a first full-time dean.

This interim period — approval in hand but no dean yet appointed — goes some way to explaining why the University ultimately chose a seasoned medical professional who combined clinical, administrative, and educational experience. Building a new medical school required not only academic prestige but also the administrative skill to navigate the civil service, coordinate with hospitals, and secure curriculum accreditation.

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# 3. Founding Dean Gerald Choa: A Medical Education Forged in War

The successful founding of the CUHK Faculty of Medicine hinged on one key planner: its founding dean, Gerald Hugh Choa (蔡永業, 1921–2001).

# 1. Wartime detours: from HKU to Cheeloo University

According to publicly available biographical sources, Choa’s medical training is itself a condensed history of his time. He began studying medicine at the University of Hong Kong, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Pacific War — after the fall of Hong Kong in late 1941, normal teaching at HKU’s medical school could no longer continue. Amid the war, he made his way to ‘Free China’ to carry on, completing his studies at the Cheeloo University Medical School (which had relocated from Jinan, Shandong, during the war). He earned his MD from Cheeloo University in 1945; after the war, HKU resumed operations, and in 1946 he retroactively received his MBBS from the University of Hong Kong.

A medical education interrupted and reshaped by war: Choa’s path to qualification spanned two medical schools on opposite sides of the conflict — HKU in occupied Hong Kong and Cheeloo in Free China. Such trajectories — fall, internal relocation, resumption — were not uncommon among intellectuals and professionals of his generation. They also fostered a pragmatic style of “getting things done under adverse conditions,” a style that would later reappear as he built the CUHK medical school from scratch.

# 2. Two decades at HKU and in the government health system

According to public records, after earning his dual qualifications, Choa worked at both HKU and in the government medical service:

• 1952–1956: Lecturer in Medicine at HKU;
• 1956–1967: Part-time Lecturer and Examiner in Medicine at HKU, while also working in the government medical system;
• 1967: Appointed Deputy Director (Medical Division) of the Medical and Health Department;
• 1970: Promoted to Director of Medical and Health Services, overseeing public medical and health policy across the territory, a post he held until he joined CUHK in 1976.

In other words, before joining CUHK, Choa had accumulated nearly two decades of clinical, teaching, and administrative experience in Hong Kong’s public healthcare system, including six years at the very top of health policy. This background carried far more weight than a purely academic CV — when he moved to CUHK in 1976, he brought not just medical expertise but a wealth of hard-won practical knowledge about how to establish a medical school within Hong Kong’s institutional framework.

From the highest echelons of government to a blank slate: The decision to leave the post of Director of Medical and Health Services to become the planner of a medical school that did not yet exist is striking. Rather than stay in an established government role, Choa chose something far more entrepreneurial — and far more uncertain: creating a medical school from scratch. His judgement in making this move in some ways prefigured the path the CUHK medical faculty would later take. It was less about following the precedent set by HKU and faithfully copying its model, and more about using his network and experience within the government machinery to pave a smoother route for the new school — including securing a teaching hospital site and coordinating with health authorities.

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# 4. Founding Dean Gerald Choa: From Blueprint to Reality

According to the CUHK official ‘Our Founding Dean’ page^※ and a CUHK press release on the memorial lecture^※:

• Choa joined CUHK in 1976;
• He was appointed the faculty’s first full-time dean in 1977;
• He served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1 March 1979 to 28 February 1981;
• He was the founder and founding dean of the medical faculty and held the position of Chair Professor of Administrative Medicine.

According to CUHK official site^※, Choa played a key role at every level of the faculty’s establishment — including the teaching hospital, curriculum design, and the recruitment of senior teaching, service and research staff. He also facilitated the creation of a teaching hospital, which later became the Prince of Wales Hospital (for the teaching hospital’s clinical history, see prince-of-wales-and-sars.md).

According to the Faculty’s ‘Milestones’ page^※, under Choa’s leadership the faculty’s development proceeded as follows:

Building from nothing: Founding a medical faculty is far more than opening a few courses. It requires simultaneously erecting three pillars — a teaching hospital, a curriculum, and a senior faculty — while also winning recognition from international professional bodies. From 1977 onwards, Choa’s work was about turning those three pillars from blueprints into reality. Enrolling the first students in 1981 was only the first step; putting the teaching hospital system in place in 1983–84 was the real hard fight. The GMC recommendation in 1987 meant the faculty’s degree qualifications met international professional standards. In effect, the integrated model of teaching, research, and clinical care that defines CUHK’s medical faculty was laid down at its inception by its founding dean.

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# 5. The Founding Dean’s Academic Credentials

According to CUHK official site^※, Choa’s own academic credentials were substantial:

• He held an MBBS and an MD from the University of Hong Kong (the MD was actually awarded by Cheeloo University during the war; the MBBS was retroactively awarded by HKU after the war, as noted above);
• He was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London (FRCP), a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (FRCP Edinburgh), and a Fellow of the Faculty of Community Medicine (FFCM).

A senior medical scientist trained at HKU, who completed his studies at Cheeloo University, held multiple fellowships from the UK Royal Colleges, and had served as Director of Medical and Health Services — that such a figure chose to lay the foundations for “Hong Kong’s second medical faculty” is itself symbolic. He brought with him the established medical traditions of HKU and the practical experience of the public health system, weaving both into the fabric of the new CUHK medical school. The two medical faculties were thus not entirely disconnected; they share a lineage in personnel and tradition. In a sense, the “second” medical faculty was built by a man who had come from the “first.”

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# 6. A Second Career in Later Life: Medical Historian

After stepping down as dean, Choa did not confine himself to administrative and clinical work. He turned to researching and writing the history of medicine, leaving behind a work of scholarly significance. According to a Wellcome Collection bibliographic record^※, in 1990 he published “Heal the Sick” was Their Motto: The Protestant Medical Missionaries in China through The Chinese University Press — a systematic study of the history of Protestant medical missionaries in modern China. Written in English, this monograph attracted attention and reviews from the international sinological and medical history communities.

From builder of medical schools to writer of medical history: This shift is not entirely surprising. Choa had already traversed clinical medicine, healthcare administration, and medical education. Turning to medical history in his later years was, in a sense, a way of channelling a lifetime’s practical experience into academic reflection on the larger question of how modern medicine took root in China. A man who had personally built a medical faculty later turned his gaze back to the missionary doctors who brought modern medicine to China generations earlier — a full-circle journey with considerable historical resonance.

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# 7. Teaching, Research, and Clinical Care: The Long Shadow of the Founding Model

The “teaching-research-care” model established by Choa had a profound and lasting impact on the faculty’s subsequent development:

• Teaching hospital: Prince of Wales Hospital served as the main teaching hospital, immersing medical students in real clinical settings (for the clinical history, see prince-of-wales-and-sars.md);
• Research flagship: The faculty later produced world-class research such as NIPT (non-invasive prenatal testing; see 04-research/nipt-deepdive.md) and established state key laboratories in digestive disease and translational oncology (see 04-research/state-key-laboratories.md);
• Expansion of disciplines: The faculty has since grown into a large, multi-disciplinary entity encompassing medicine, nursing, pharmacy, Chinese medicine, biomedical sciences, public health, and more (for the structure, see faculty-of-medicine.md), with the School of Chinese Medicine being integrated from the Faculty of Science in 2013 (see school-of-chinese-medicine.md).

To honour the founding dean, CUHK established the Gerald Choa Memorial Lecture (according to a CUHK press release^※), as well as the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Institute, which bears his name. Through this pairing of a memorial lecture and a research institute, his legacy in clinical care, education, and research is carried forward.

The character of a medical faculty is often set at its founding. The subsequent achievements of CUHK’s medical faculty — in clinical care at Prince of Wales Hospital, in research such as NIPT and the state key laboratories — are all of a piece with Choa’s original “teaching-research-care” blueprint. From a young medical student fleeing war, to Hong Kong’s Director of Medical and Health Services, to the founding dean of a medical school, and finally to a medical historian in his later years — Gerald Choa’s personal trajectory encapsulates, in microcosm, Hong Kong medicine’s journey in the twentieth century: from a colonial public health system to a centre of internationally recognised medical education. The founding dean’s vision set the tone for a faculty that would develop over decades.

Related reading: Faculty Structure and Clinical Departments, Prince of Wales Hospital and SARS, School of Chinese Medicine, In-depth Look at NIPT, State Key Laboratories, Faculty of Medicine Deep Dive.

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