Press Releases

SFH on drug incidents

Following is the transcript of question and answer session at a stand-up media session by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at the West Wing of the Central Government Offices today (March 23):

Reporter: (reputation)

Secretary for Food and Health: It is important that every time we detect anything that is sort of being imperfect, we should try to address it as soon as possible. But in this case, certainly, I think the multiple incidents shown that there is certain complacency in the system, both I think in the trade as well as in our governance as well. So, I think it is important that we should address it as soon as possible, try to correct it and also take advantage of this opportunity to update our system so that we can match up with the international standards and one of them perhaps the highest standard that they are achievable.

Reporter: (Which department)

Secretary for Food and Health: I think in this case, the whole government should be held accountable, particularly my bureau because we are supervising the Department of Health as well as the Hospital Authority. Regarding the specific task of regulating drugs and medicines, they are a very professional task. They also require highly professional people. So, it is important that we supervise their work, and also give them the right resources that they can actually achieve their task. At the same time, as I��ve said earlier on, since Hong Kong has not had major incidents of this kind for some years, it is quite normal that people would get a bit complacent and start to slack off, I think it is important that we should learn from this lesson and able to improve on every front, including ourselves.

Reporter: (How many patients are involved?)

Director (Cluster Services), Hospital Authority, Dr Cheung Wai-lun: At this moment, the incident is still under investigation. Because apart from our own internal investigation, we still need the supplier and manufacturer to give us the report on the whole investigation. That is why today they fly over an expert from Indonesia to come to Hong Kong to look at the situation. In general, all these water are mainly for diluting drugs for injections. Usually, the situation is that either the doctor or the nurses will draw up the adequate amount of water required in order to do the dilution before administering to the patient. So, in general, all these water, although the amount is in excess, do not have direct impact on the patients. So, at this moment, we do not have any report that there are any patients that are actually affected by this incident.

Reporter: (Expect more incidents?)

Secretary for Food and Health: I would rather discover it themselves than actually have complaints coming from patients. So, it is important that what we have instructed the Hospital Authority to do is to proactively check the stock to ensure that they have drugs of quality and safety, so that it will not affect our patients. So, that is the most important point.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)


Ends/Monday, March 23, 2009
Issued at HKT 20:23

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