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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 in the Legislative Council Building today (March 30):
Reporter: (on restricting the number of pregnant women coming from the Mainland)
Secretary for Food and Health: This is always a concern and particularly an escalating problem regarding the increasing number of babies born from Mainland mothers. From 2004 and 2005, when there were only a few hundred of those babies, now it amounts to about 40,000. It really puts pressure on our obstetrics services and neonatal intensive care units, and even may be the paediatrics services. I think this is a real problem we need to tackle.
Reporter: (on radiation in Hong Kong air samples)
Secretary for Food and Health: As far as our data collection goes, Hong Kong's radiation level is within normal limits at the moment. There is no additional hazard to any human beings in Hong Kong. The situation in Japan of course is progressing all the time. At the moment, I do not think we can predict what will be the outcome until they can actually stop the radiation coming from the nuclear plant in Fukushima. We will continue the monitoring as well as the daily testing of all the targeted products, for example all the food imported from Japan. If we detect anything, we will ensure it will not go into the market.
Reporter: (on contingency plans for when radiation level goes up in Hong Kong)
Secretary for Food and Health: The Daya Bay contingency plan has all the contingency measures that are required in case the environmental radiation increases to a significant extent. As far as the situation in Japan goes, it is our expert opinion that it is very unlikely that it will actually affect Hong Kong, neither from the air current or weather type or the water current. We will for now focus more on imports of Japanese products that might be contaminated, particularly in food stuffs.
Reporter: (on examination of dairy products)
Secretary for Food and Health: This is considered as one of our targeted products. In fact, we have already decided to ban dairy products from five prefectures in Japan, together with vegetables and some of the food and so on. At the moment, the risk from dairy products is just the same as vegetables and fruit.
Reporter: (on how long the radiation testing will be continued)
Secretary for Food and Health: Our testing will continue until we are sure that there is no risk. This type of testing will continue for a long time. Particularly for dairy products, it is not just Hong Kong testing, the Japanese government is also testing them and they have already destroyed quite a number of cartons of milk near Fukushima area. It is very important for us to note that the main issue is still within Japan but we want to make sure that those issues would not affect indirectly anything that comes to Hong Kong.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Issued at HKT 14:55
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