HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL-8 March 1989
香港立法局
一九八九年三月八日
49
I was once told that public hospitals are always built with wide corridors. I can see the reasoning, for it is obviously the wisdom and the foresight of the Administration that spaces are needed to accommodate camp-beds. The detested state of congestion is not only extremely uncomfortable to the sick, conducive to spreading infection, but also stifles staff morale. Ironically, Hong Kong boasts some 4.5 hospital beds per 1 000 population a ratio that many countries look forward to matching.
It is bad enough to be sick, it is worse to be poor and be sick, it is unbearable if one is poor and sick and has to be turned away after hours of waiting at a government clinic only to be told that the day's quota had been filled! Unfortunately, if one is poor and sick, one has no alternative but to rely on the services provided under the government cheap health scheme. It is inconceivable in a progressive society as ours that it is a very common phenomenon for the sick to wait some nine months to one year to get an appointment for a specialist consultation.
Hong Kong boasts to be one of the major financial centres, to have the world's largest container terminal, to have one of the most efficient telecommunication services; yet our major hospitals do not even have a 24-hour pharmacy service.
I could go on indefinitely with similar examples that Hong Kong regrets to have experienced. Time, however, does not allow me to dwell on more of this except to say that these are but just some of the symptoms of an ailing medical and health system which deserves a complete overhaul!
Sir, let me put it to you that our patients are our consumers of the medical and health system. Their misfortune with the public hospitals reflects the lack of proper management of our existing medical and health delivery services.
Hong Kong has accumulated a total reserve in revenue of over $14 billion for 1988, but there is actually a decrease from 9.3% to 8.7% of the total budget spent on medical and health services for the year to come. Yet within this period, there are expanding medical projects! Is the Administration really sincere in its commitment to improve the medical and health services? Or are the administrators insensitive to the needs of the needy as they themselves belong to the privileged few who get special treatments in the government hospitals?
If the patients in government hospitals are treated badly, those in the subvented hospitals are even worse. With the same heavy workload on patient care, subvented hospitals are afforded a much lower running sum per hospital