Pilot door-to-door hospital transfers from mainland China and Macau will not be two-way street at first, health secretary says
- Door-to-door service not reciprocal at first because of more complex procedures for approval of vehicles, doctors, equipment and medicine travelling from Hong Kong
- Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau added service to be open to non-Hongkongers, but will not put a major burden on city health services
A pilot cross-border ambulance scheme will start with patients sent to Hong Kong from a mainland Chinese hospital and one in Macau, but would not be a two-way street, the city’s health chief has said.
Lo Chung-mau, the health secretary, told lawmakers on Friday that the door-to-door service would not be reciprocal at first because of the more complex procedures needed to preapprove the vehicles, doctors, medical equipment and medicines travelling from Hong Kong to the mainland or Macau.
He added the service would be open to non-Hongkongers, but was unlikely to put a major burden on the city’s public health system as just dozens of patients were likely to be eligible each year.
The pilot scheme, expected to start in the middle of the year after a trial run scheduled to begin as soon as the end of the month, would offer ambulance services to eligible patients from the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital on the mainland and Centro Hospitalar Conde de São Januário in Macau direct to Hong Kong’s public hospitals.
But no patients would be sent from Hong Kong to the two hospitals across the border in the first stage of the scheme.