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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, today (March 9) after inspecting the operation of public hospitals during peak influenza season:
Reporter: Are you confident that the measures can handle the peak surge that is expected and also ...
Secretary for Food and Health: I have full confidence in our professional frontline staff in maintaining their professionalism during such an emergency period and doing their best to manage our patients. I also have full confidence in our management in doing their best to come up with various contingency measures to help us tide over this special situation.
Reporter: Is this year's peak season especially hard to cope with because of the Hospital Authority's (HA) budget cuts on resources?
Secretary for Food and Health: It is not related in any way to the budget situation. The (HA) Chairman has earlier explained that there is no resource constraint for our frontline staff. But we do have difficulty in recruiting adequate numbers of staff. This is because the training of our professional staff has lagged behind in the past decade. In this regard, we are doing our best (to address the situation), including adding back the needed placements in our tertiary institutions to help train up adequate numbers of professional healthcare staff as quickly as possible to address the medical needs of the public.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Issued at HKT 14:54
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