****************************
Following is the transcript of a media session by the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, at the Conference Hall, Central Government Offices New Annex, Central today (May 28):
Chief Executive: This afternoon, the Chief Secretary for Administration will be announcing to the public the plans in the Team Clean report. And in such a short time the CS has been able to assemble really a very comprehensive report about making Hong Kong's environmental hygiene much more suited for World City of Asia. It is really quite a piece of good work. The plan has my full support and I hope the plan will have the support of the community as a whole.
I am here today to announce two other matters of concern to the public. Firstly, I have decided to ask Patrick Ho, Secretary for Home Affairs, to establish an advisory committee. The members of the advisory committee will be from the community at large. And what does the advisory committee do? I have said more than once that throughout this fight against SARS, Hong Kong people have demonstrated a unique quality which all of us should be very proud of. I have said many times that our frontline medical workers, it is their effort, it is their sacrifices that have made what we have achieved today possible, and what this advisory committee will do will be searching for and gathering opinions from all sectors of the community with a view to find a permanent way to commemorate this wonderful spirit of Hong Kong. The names of this advisory committee will be announced shortly and I will ask Patrick to submit a report before the end of June.
The other issue which I want to talk about relates to what I said on May 15. On May 15, I asked Dr EK Yeoh to organise an expert group from the wider international community as well as from the Mainland and professionals in Hong Kong to really take a look at what we have done over the last few months in our fight against SARS, to gather experience and learn lessons from what we have done. The SARS epidemic is a new virus and it affects the health of every one of our citizens, and the question we need to ask ourselves is: Is today's public health system, including the work of the Department of Health or the Hospital Authority, are they there, are they strong enough to give efficient and quick response to protect the health of our community if there is another outbreak like this in Hong Kong? Today, I formally announce the formation of this special experts committee. It consists of nine people from other parts of the world. They are experts in the field of hospital management, epidemiology, public health and clinical treatment. They are from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, two of them are from Hong Kong. There will be additional experts coming from the Mainland and the names will be announced very shortly.
I am delighted that so many foremost experts from around the world will be coming to Hong Kong to work with us. This is an issue which affects the well-being of every citizen of Hong Kong and therefore as we move ahead with our work, we need to be sure that we look for solutions, we want to gather from experience, but we want to be sure that is done in a way that our whole medical system remains stable, efficient and forward-looking. That's why I want to emphasise that this is a work about looking into the past and learning from the experience to make sure that we can do better next time round. It is not directed against any person.
And the other thing I want to emphasise is that there may be another epidemic coming this winter - and I want to emphasise that it is just a maybe, it may not happen and I believe it will not happen - but if it does happen, I want to be better ready. And that's why I have asked Dr Yeoh to complete a report by September so we will have time to implement the suggestions made in the report. In such a short time, Dr Yeoh has been able to assemble this team of experts, as well as in a very short time, he has to compress a lot of work into a very short time to be able to give me the report by September. It's a lot of work but I'm sure he will be able to do it.
I want to emphasise one more time at this moment that our most important work as of this moment, although the numbers are looking alright, but our most important work at this moment is still about fighting SARS. We need to make sure that at the end of the day there will be no more SARS new cases and this is the most important work that we have and we should not let our guard down. Only if we have no new cases we will then be able to remove our name from the WHO infected areas list, and this must be our total and only objective at this moment.
End/Wednesday, May 28, 2003
NNNN
Floor/
Cantonese/
Putonghua/
English
