Press Releases
SFH on drug and loss of USB incidents
Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session at
the Legislative Council Building today (April 14):
Reporter: (about the drug incident at Tung Wah Hospital)
Secretary for Food and Health: Of course every time we have loss of life, we
feel grave regret and try to see if anything could have been done to prevent
it from happening. In this case, we have asked the Hospital Authority to
investigate fully the facts behind and the people responsible, whether the
patient died because of overdose or not, so all these things need to be
investigated with full facts. The Hospital Authority would need to
strengthen the supervision of the frontline staff to ensure that they do
every work according to professional guidelines and standards that are being
adopted. For pharmacists and also for a lot of healthcare procedures, there
is no shortcut. There is always a procedure that one has to follow. We
cannot just trust somebody send in something and think that this is okay.
Every one has a responsibility in the whole chain of healthcare, so it is
very important that they should monitor each other and check on each other.
Reporter: (about apology to the deceased)
Secretary for Food and Health: I was overseas when that happened. I have
asked my Under Secretary to do what he did.
Reporter: What was wrong with the United Christian Hospital, with another
USB loss?
Secretary for Food and Health: The incident of losing another USB just
within a month or so is actually quite shocking, since a similar incident
happened only a month ago and it seems that the whole hospital should have
learnt from that mistake. I have requested the Hospital Authority to look
closely at the system and the guidelines given to staff, particularly the
monitoring and supervision of the frontline staff.
Reporter: Do you think that the chief executive of the United Christian
Hospital should be reprimanded because after all he is responsible for the
whole hospital?
Secretary for Food and Health: The management always has some responsibility
in all this but it is also important that the frontline staff, particularly
the clinical departments, should have communicated all these guidelines and
instructed the frontline staff. Protecting the privacy of patients is a
priority. There are many other ways of downloading data for academic
purposes without exposing the identity of the patients.
Reporter: Obviously they are not listening.
Secretary for Food and Health: As I have said, this is rather shocking to
me.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Issued at HKT 18:13
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