The Secretary for Health, Professor Lo Chung-mau, met with a delegation led by the Director General of the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, Professor Wen Daxiang, to exchange views on reinforcing healthcare collaboration between Shanghai and Hong Kong today (April 26).
At the meeting, the two parties engaged in in-depth discussions over the four highlighted areas of co-operation put forward in the Memorandum of Understanding on Healthcare Cooperation between the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission and the Health Bureau of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region signed this morning at the 6th Plenary Session of the Hong Kong/Shanghai Co-operation Conference. The four areas of co-operation cover traditional Chinese medicine (CM), high-quality development of public hospitals, community health as well as prevention and control of infectious diseases and health emergency responses.
Professor Lo said, "For the very first time, the Chief Executive adopted cross-boundary medical collaboration as one of the subtitles in the 2023 Policy Address, demonstrating how deep the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government values medical collaboration with the Mainland on various fronts. The Hong Kong SAR Government has indeed been strengthening co-operation on healthcare service developments and enhancing healthcare quality in the two places with various Mainland counterparts under the principles of complementarity and mutual benefits and on the premise of benefitting the healthcare development of the Mainland and Hong Kong. Looking ahead, the two places will continue to strive to foster cross-boundary healthcare collaboration and draw concerted efforts to push forward the important national strategy of 'Healthy China'.
"With the support of the Hong Kong SAR Government, the Hospital Authority (HA) is actively following up with the relevant healthcare authorities of Shanghai on the two-way talent exchange and deepening of professional co-operation arrangements for public hospitals of both places, aiming to realise the two-way exchange of suitable doctors in phases within this year. In respect of CM, I am particularly grateful to the relevant authorities of Shanghai for recommending CM experts to advise us on the planning of Hong Kong's first Chinese Medicine Hospital. We will continue to encourage more Hong Kong CM practitioners to participate in clinical training exchanges in Shanghai with a view to elevating the professional standard of the sector."
The Director of Health, Dr Ronald Lam; the Controller of Regulatory Affairs of the Department of Health (DH), Dr Amy Chiu; the Chief Executive of the HA, Dr Tony Ko; the Director of Cluster Services of the HA, Dr Simon Tang, and representatives from the Health Bureau and the DH also attended the meeting today.
Follow this news feed: East Asia