Replies to LegCo questions
LCQ10:Chest services in Tuen Mun Hospital
Following is a question by the Hon Ho Chun-yan and a written reply by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, in the Legislative Council today (October 9):
Question:
Will the Government inform this Council:
(a) of the number of patients referred from Yan Oi Chest Clinic in Tuen Mun to the tuberculosis and chest services of hospitals outside the district for treatment over the past three years; and
(b) whether it knows if the authorities concerned will consider setting up tuberculosis and chest services in Tuen Mun Hospital to provide relevant specialist care services for residents in New Territories West?
Reply :
Madam President,
(a) As a major acute hospital in the New Territories West cluster, Tuen Mun Hospital (TMH) has been providing specialist services for patients suffering from tuberculosis (TB) and chest conditions for many years. TMH has a team of respiratory medicine specialists that provides both acute care and rehabilitation services to patients with respiratory problems. It also has designated TB beds that provide acute inpatient services to TB patients. For patients requiring long term inpatient treatment of TB, the Hospital Authority (HA) currently operates a network of five designated hospitals (i.e. Grantham Hospital, Ruttonjee Hospital, Kowloon Hospital, Wong Tai Sin Hospital and Haven of Hope Hospital) that provides long term inpatient services for TB patients of the whole territory. The number of patients referred by Yan Oi Chest Clinic to these five designated hospitals in the past three years are as follows:
Year 1999 2000 2001
Number of patients 440 380 331
(b) The five designated hospitals that provide long term inpatient services to TB patients require the support of specialist teams. To ensure the effective use of resources, such specialised services are only provided at designated hospitals to ensure that resources and expertise are pooled together to provide quality services to patients. Due to the physical constraints of TMH, long term inpatient TB services could not be provided at the existing hospital blocks of TMH but HA will consider the possibility of providing long term inpatient TB services at TMH in their future development plan.
End/Wednesday, October 9, 2002
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