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The following is issued on behalf of the Hospital Authority:
More than 100 Hospital Authority (HA) staff volunteers and staff representatives took an oath at a Flag Presentation Ceremony today (November 19), to provide professional and quality medical services to participants and guests of the Hong Kong 2009 East Asian Game (EAG) from December 5-13.
"Nine public hospitals will be designated for the provision of emergency medical services and admission for EAG athletes, officials and related parties," HA Chief Manager (Infection, Emergency and Contingency) Dr Liu Shao-haei said.
The nine public hospitals are Queen Mary Hospital; Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital; Ruttonjee and Tang Shiu Kin Hospital; Princess Margaret Hospital; Queen Elizabeth Hospital; United Christian Hospital; Tseung Kwan O Hospital; Tuen Mun Hospital and Prince of Wales Hospital.
"It is a usual practise in large-scale international sports event that the government of the host country will provide free medical services to the athletes, team officials, technical officials, and other accredited persons during their stay," Dr Liu said. He pledged that HA would give full support to the Hong Kong Government in the area of professional expertise, equipment and manpower resources without compromising the standard and service of local medical services.
Designated hospitals will set up green channels for fast track clinical management of EAG accredited persons and provide support to venue medical teams.
Venue Medical Officer Dr Jimmy Chan Tak-shing, said that 65 doctors and 65 nurses had volunteered to cover the acute and emergency care of athletes, team officials at the competition venues.
"Special training and briefing sessions on emergency sports medicine have been arranged to equip and update these staff volunteers who will be providing a total of 2,320 man-hours of service at the 21 competition venues and for 22 sports events," Dr Chan said.
The EAG is expecting to attract a large number of tourists to Hong Kong and large crowds at various ceremony and competition venues. Dr Liu said there were established contingency response plans for different mass casualty scenarios and infectious disease outbreaks.
"Exercise drills simulating different emergency scenarios have been performed in the past few months to test the feasibility of and familiarise staff members and related parties with the contingency plans," Dr Liu said.
He also noted that for the Human Swine Influenza currently circulating in Hong Kong, "a contingency plan has set out the precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the disease among EAG participants and the contingency measures to be implemented should the situation exacerbate during the competition period."
"The plan is in line with the existing HA guidelines for Human Swine Influenza and will be revisited before the EAG in light of the latest development of the disease in Hong Kong."
"With the support from the Government, a designated funding of $12.5 million has been made available for the provision of medical services for EAG." Dr Liu explained that the additional resources would ensure that normal HA services would not be affected.
"The community will benefit from this international sporting event as the additional equipment purchased by the medical team will become assets of the hospital clinical departments after the EAG, besides the valuable experience gained by participating staff in this event," Dr Liu said.
Ends/Thursday, November 19, 2009
Issued at HKT 19:25
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