Following are the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Professor Lo Chung-mau, at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (January 31):

Reporter: On review of the Medical Council's complaint system, has your Bureau identified any issues that led to delays in dealing with complaints so far, and in what ways would the Bureau deal with such issues to ensure fair and timely trials at the Council? Thank you.

Secretary for Health: We take it very seriously about the recent incidents about the delay in the handling of all these complaint cases and disciplinary hearings. We have requested the Medical Council (Medical Council of Hong Kong) to provide us with the review of the mechanism and provide us with some suggestions and recommendations for the areas of improvement. At the same time, after we received the Medical Council's review, we also sought additional information. We are going through the Medical Council's review report as well as the additional information. We have certainly identified some areas that have to be addressed and improved. These involve certain areas which may require the amendment of the Medical Registration Ordinance. The Medical Council's hearing, in a way, is a judicial procedure, and the handling of all these complaint cases is between the complainants and the defendants, so it has to make sure the procedural justice. But sometimes there is delay because of allowing sufficient and reasonable time for both sides to provide information. One potential delay is in seeking expert reports. It is because all these complaint cases involve medical procedures and the opinion from experts on particular areas, especially for certain complicated medical procedures, requires time. The delay caused by this will certainly not be addressed by the amendment of the Medical Registration Ordinance, so we have to look into the details and address all these pressure points and delays, so that we will ensure that similar cases will not happen again. We are looking into every area including an amendment of the Medical Registration Ordinance which we will be submitting to the LegCo (Legislative Council) - first of all, to the Panel on Health Services for a discussion in February and then possibly submitting the amendment to the LegCo in April this year.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Ends/Saturday, January 31, 2026
Issued at HKT 15:55

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