Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a media session after launching the "Enhancing the Evidence - base for TCM Practice - Methodology and Grantsmanship" Workshop this (October 30) morning:

Reporter: You said that there has been provisions for Chinese Medicine services in the public sector next year......

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Maybe I will go back to the Chinese Medicine. They are asking about the waiver system of the safety net for the public hospital system. I was referring back that in the consultation document that we issued in the year 2000, on the restructuring of fees and charges, the primary objective of the restructuring was to better target our subsidies to ensure that low-income individuals would not be affected disproportionately so that the priority of the subsidies from public revenue would always be to support the low-income. The other priority of the restructuring of the fees and charges' objective is to ensure that services which carry a high financial risk, like patients with cancer or with strokes that require long intensive rehabilitation with very expensive technologies, these services would continue to be heavily subsidised. So, these were two of the objectives in the fees restructuring. In the consultation document, we talked about second safety net but this is really an enhancement of our current system. Right even now, about 30 per cent of individuals who come to our public hospital services, they have their fees totally or partly waived. About two thirds of these are individuals on the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance scheme. Another third are individuals who are low-income. These are, as we know, people in Hong Kong with low-income who do not go and apply for CSSA. We need then to ensure that as we restructure our fees our public hospital fees do not affect the low-income disproportionately. So, there will always be a need to have some form of waiver system where individuals who come from low-income families can apply for a partial or total waiver. I was explaining that we only intend to introduce the fees for the emergency departments in this financial year, and the intention is to introduce other charges for the public health system only after the Financial Secretary has lifted the moratorium on public fees. When we propose the changes of charges for emergency care, we would still have our present waiver system where individuals who have chronical illnesses and need to see doctors very frequently and find the additional charge an unnecessary burden on them can apply to have fees partly or completely waived. We are saying that because this is just one fee in the whole context of all our fees and charges, there does not need to have any change in our waiver system at the moment. But as the whole fee restructuring goes on, we will be assessing the impact of those changes on different groups and community, and we will then need to strengthen our present waiver system.

Reporter: Going back to Chinese Medicine?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Let's go back to the Chinese Medicine. As you know in Hong Kong, we are committed to developing Chinese Medicine as one of our areas of excellence in Hong Kong. There are four strategies involved in doing this development. First is of course having a comprehensive regulatory framework for Chinese Medicine Practitioners, for Chinese Medicines. And of course, you know that the Chinese Medicine Ordinance had already been enacted in 1999, we are now registering Chinese Medicine doctors, and we are in the final stages of doing the regulatory framework for Chinese Medicine traders and Chinese Medicine. The second part of the strategy is to have a programme in training education for Chinese Medicine Practitioners as three of our tertiary institutions have degree programmes for training Chinese Medicine Practitioners. And one of the tertiary institutions has a degree programme for Chinese Medicine Pharmacy. The third part of the strategy is to introduce Chinese Medicine into the public health sector. And it is our target, it is still our objective to introduce the first clinic in the public health sector in the early part of the next calender year, towards the end of this financial year, and to have 18 centres eventually of Chinese Medicine. The fourth part of the strategy is to look into developing scientific evidence for Chinese Medicine practice. And this is very much integral to the introduction of Chinese Medicine clinics in the public sector because what we wish to do is to use modern science to verify and confirm the benefits of Chinese Medicine. As you have heard today there are lots of variations in practice. There is insufficient standardisation of the medicinal compounds. So we need a regulatory framework and we need the science-base to bring benefits to the community. This is the only way that we are going to be able to make Chinese Medicine one of our science of evidence. Without the research and science base, there would always be sceptics and doubts. And this workshop today, which is co-organised with the National Institutes of Health of the United States; and the University of Maryland, is one of the very important initiatives which we are doing to promote the development of research in Chinese Medicine. The University of Maryland and the National Institutes of Health have very good and comprehensive programmes of research in not just Chinese Medicine but in other areas of complementary medicine. And the National Institutes of Health, as you heard today, is a Centre and Institute for development of complementary medicine and they every year look for research grants totalling over US$100 million every year where they fund research in complementary medicine not just in the United States but throughout the world. It is not just the money that we are talking about, it is also the collaboration, the opportunities for collaboration. The University of Maryland is one of the premier universities in America that has done a lot of work in complementary medicine. We are looking for opportunities for collaboration in the international community so that we will then be able to use evidence base for Hong Kong and for China. It is very encouraging that today's workshop has attracted over 300 participants attending and there are delegates from 15 countries. They are all here to share in this scientific exchange.

Reporter: How much is the Government willing to invest in the development of TCM?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Well, the Government, as you know, has an institute of Chinese Medicine where the Jockey Club has put in five hundred million dollars and their research efforts so far, at least from Jockey Club donations, has been put directly into research. Of course the other amount of money that has been put in is in the regulatory framework and the regulations for Chinese Medicine practice need to be funded. The other part of the funding is to have the practice base in the field of Chinese Medicine.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

Wednesday, October 30, 2002