Press Releases
Transcript of media session by SHWF
Following is the transcript (English portion) of a media session by the
Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, after attending the
"Building A Healthy Tomorrow" public consultation session today (August 17):
Reporter: You've been mobbed by protesters when attending this .... how do you
find their criticisms or comments?
Dr Chow: I think they all, of course, have the grounds for their appeals mainly
because they represent the lower social class and also the elderly. We feel that
our recommendations, particularly in this service model report, is focused on
how to look after our elderly folks in the future. At the moment, I think many
of our elderly folks might be staying at home or in old age homes and deprived
of proper medical and nursing care. So we hope that the future model would be
able to cater and improve on the existing services. Of course, with that sort of
recommendations we do need additional resources. We also require co-operation
from different sectors.
Reporter: They are also very concern about the financing of it?
Dr Chow: The reason why we try to address this is that we are also concerned
about the financing, because we know that our existing system will not be
sustainable in the long term. And that is the reason why we have first to
address the service model, and then based on a consensus on the society�� s value
of Hong Kong, to see how we can come up with various models of financing as we
need to know from our citizens whether they are willing to share some of the
resources with others in terms of the pooling of risk management in insurance.
And, secondly, whether they are willing to save up for the future. All these are
very important issues that we need to have the society's consensus before we can
come up with specific recommendations.
Reporter: (on eels)
Dr Chow: I hope this is of course the time of suspension in term of food safety.
We understand that people have a lot of concern about food, particularly coming
from the Mainland. As far as we are concerned, we have very strong communication
system for those foods that are directly imported from China under the
authorities and also under the quarantine authority of China. We have to
understand that within China, every city and province have a different system of
deciding when to permit or ban their own internal markets. So we have to
understand the criteria that they do this and, at the same time, we need
clarification from the authority with regard to the safety level of those
cities. More importantly, I think we need to focus on some of the at risk
factors. I think, in the case of pork, we have already sent our veterinary
surgeons to a number of provinces to inspect the supply units and also the pig
farms. We intend to extend (the inspection) to all provinces so that we can
resume the healthy supply of pork to Hong Kong as soon as possible.
Reporter: There was another case of Streptococcus suis in Hong Kong, does that
mean Hong Kong's preventive measures are not strong enough?
Dr Chow: We need to investigate the cause of infection of this particular
patient first. As I explained earlier, pigs usually harbour these bacteria in
certain percentage and, if during the slaughtering process, contamination might
occur so that the bacteria might appear in some of the pork whether they were
from Hong Kong or overseas. So the most important thing is to ensure that people
who would handle pork should look after their own hygiene, and also, if they
have wounds in their hands they have to make sure they were well treated and
bandaged before they touch the raw pork. Of course the other area that we'll
also like to look at is: whether this particular infection is similar to all the
rest in the past. I think this is very important.
Reporter: (on measures for butchers)
Dr Chow: We did actually recommend that to them but there is also concern that
if they were wearing gloves they would forget to wash their hands. This is
something that I think is very similar to doctors and nurses. So the most
important thing is, if they have any wound in their hands, they must treat it
well and have it well covered.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Wednesday, August 17, 2005
NNNN