Press Releases

SFH on human swine flu vaccine and nursing manpower

Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a media stand-up session after attending a public function today (January 28):

Reporter: Are you concerned about wastage of human swine flu vaccine?

Secretary for Food and Health: Like all types of stockpiling, we expect there will be some degree of wastage and particularly for this type of vaccine, if there is no severe outbreak of the pandemic and if there is no high demand for it, of course some of them will not be used at all. It is important that I have mentioned time and again that this is an insurance to ensure that in times of need, we actually have the supply.

Reporter: Are you concerned about the public healthcare services being compromised because of lack of nurses?

Secretary for Food and Health: The number of nurses in the public sector was actually hit by various issues in the last five years. Because there was a voluntary retirement scheme in 2003 and increase of services in the private sector starting from 2004 and 2005, we did actually face increase of wastage in the last three or four years. But starting from last year, we have already increased the number of nurses in the public sector and we foresee also there will be around 1,400 graduates of nurses in 2010. So by autumn, I think our supply of nurses will be starting better. Looking forward to the years to come, we will be increasing the training of nurses and there will be more graduates in the year 2011, 2012 and so on. This will be able to meet some of the shortage we have.

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



Ends/Thursday, January 28, 2010
Issued at HKT 12:41

NNNN