Press Releases
SFH on flu vaccination
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
after attending a radio programme today (November 14):
Reporter: There are concerns that people may not be very keen to get
vaccines...... and million dollar of public money will be wasted. How would
you address this concerns?
Secretary for Food and Health: In fact, we have talked to the private sector
and it is going to provide certain services for the elderly as well as for
the patients with chronic illness. The idea is try to have as much subsidy
from the Government as possible and that is the reason why we are
subsidising both the vaccines as well as the $ 50 vaccination fees so that
most of them do not need to charge or do not need to charge any much extra.
That is the rationale. Of course, I have to appeal to the private doctors
that they should take into the benefit of the community and also the
importance of wider coverage of the vaccines rather than making use of that
as a means of making extra money. Although I know that some of the clinics
may have a slightly higher overhead compared with others, I think this is an
important campaign and also an exercise to protect our community. I think
they should consider not charging extra on the patients.
Reporter: Are you worried that they may choose not to get the
vaccines......?
Secretary for Food and Health: I think people would choose to go to have
vaccines particularly if they think they belong to the high-risk group.
Whether there will be a big turnout or a low turnout will very much depend
on the problem or the situation in December, because if we have a flu season
coming early, then more people will of course go to have vaccination in
December but if the flu season comes late, for example in February or March
as usual, then we may not see the enthusiasm as early as December. But we
would do as much as we can in terms of publicity and promotion.
Reporter: Medical services may have to be suspended when the vaccination
programme commence......
Secretary for Food and Health: We will definitely deploy people in order to
implement such a big exercise on vaccination and just like what happened
last year when we dealt with the melamine incident, certain services may be
suspended temporarily or may be postponed but the principle is not to affect
those essential services and also those services affect people who are very
sick.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Saturday, November 14, 2009
Issued at HKT 13:45
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