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Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media stand-up session after attending a meeting of the Panel on Health Services of the Legislative Council today (April 11):
Reporter: (on delivery services given to Mainland pregnant women whose husbands are permanent residents)
Secretary for Food and Health: At the moment, there is a limitation on how we can administer such a discretion. With the motion passed by the Panel on Health Services of the Legislative Council, we have to study how it should be done.
Reporter: (on the difficulties faced by the Hospital Authority)
Secretary for Food and Health: At present, frontline staff at the Hospital Authority would identify a patient who is entitled to Hong Kong's medical service subsidy according to his identity card. If there is anything that requires further verification of certificates and so on, it will be a difficult task for many of them. We have to seek various opinions, including legal opinion, before we can actually decide whether that can be done or not.
Reporter: (on manpower wastage of medical staff)
Secretary for Food and Health: The Hospital Authority has responded earlier that they will, according to the services needed, review their manpower. In general, Hong Kong needs a greater supply of medical doctors. Whether it comes from a gradual increase of our medical school intake, or from some overseas doctors, it will depend on the imminency of the situation. At the moment, the Hospital Authority is trying every means to retain their staff, and at the same time trying to retain some of the experienced staff even on a part-time basis so that they can assist in the services.
Reporter: (on detection of Caesium-137 in air sample in Hong Kong)
Secretary for Food and Health: The level of Caesium has been detected is extremely low and would not affect the health of any individual or human beings in general. At the moment, we have to keep on monitoring the situation, both from Hong Kong as well as our surrounding regions, particularly also from the source in Japan, to see whether there is an increasing risk or not. I think it is quite natural that after a few weeks of radiation leak in the atmosphere, there would be some minute level of radiation everywhere. But according to the experts, this is well, well below the safety limit.
Reporter: (on discussion with private hospitals on obstetric and neonatal services)
Secretary for Food and Health: We agreed with the private hospital representatives a week ago that they would come up with a recommended number of deliveries for each hospital according to their service capacity. I hope that by the end of this month, we can have the first meeting to discuss the principles of how that can be calculated. And then by the end of May, hopefully we will come up with the full figures of individual hospitals and also the capacity of the Hospital Authority for the next year.
Reporter: (on retaining medical staff)
Secretary for Food and Health: The Hospital Authority has tried every means to retain staff, particularly medical staff. As you know the majority of staff in the Hospital Authority are doctors and they have mainly undergone special training which usually requires about six to nine years. At the moment, the Hospital Authority can provide such an opportunity for them. But the other thing we need to be concerned about is whether they are working for extremely long hours that would affect their concentration and competency. In different specialties, the Hospital Authority would define certain limitations of "call hours", in other words the length of their working hours. The total (working) hours for a certain week should also be limited to a certain number. At the moment, they have already cut down the number of doctors that work more than 65 hours per week from 18% to about 4.6%. The average working hours for doctors are roughly about 52 hours for different specialties. But some specialties are much more hectic. When they are working, they are working at full stretch. When some of them have longer working hours, they might have some hours of rest in between. I think we need to be flexible, and at the same time we need to respect that they have to have some quality of life as well. So this is what the Hospital Authority is doing. The other thing that they will look at is promotion and training aspects. I think most doctors would like to have opportunity to enrich themselves by training and be more experienced. These are also important aspects for young doctors.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, April 11, 2011
Issued at HKT 14:42
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