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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 (April 6):
Reporter: (about meeting with representatives from public and private hospitals)
Secretary for Food and Health: We have discussion with public hospitals earlier. On Monday we met with representatives of the ten private hospitals that provide obstetrics services to Hong Kong and Mainland pregnant women. We have agreed that we need to upkeep the professional standards and the service capacity of Hong Kong so that we can ensure that all the pregnant women who come into our hospitals, no matter private or public, would have good quality of service. We also need to look after all the babies born as well. With that as an objective, we need to decide which hospital will have what type of quality and also what quantity of deliveries per year. The number of pregnant women that we could serve would be able to arrive after we collect all the data regarding the present service levels, facilities and manpower, as well as the projected booking that they are anticipating in the coming months.
Reporter: (about ways to stop Mainland mothers from coming to public hospitals in Hong Kong)
Secretariat for Food and Health: At the moment, all Mainland pregnant women are required to apply for booking confirmation certificates issued by Hong Kong hospitals before they are allowed to enter the territory. This should be monitored by the Immigration Officers at the border. As I said earlier, I think there is a need to control the number of Mainland pregnant women coming to Hong Kong. It is also expected that the local mothers would also be increasing. The total number of deliveries in Hong Kong has to set at a certain limit so that we can maintain the professional standards and also the quality of care. I think we are in the process of negotiating with both the public and private sectors to determine what is the optimum number for each sector and also perhaps for each hospital as well. That would take, I hope, the next two months before we can come to a definite decision on the number as well as how to control it.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Issued at HKT 14:17
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