More pet owners understand the need to care for their animals
The urgent need for trained veterinary nurses is being driven by an extraordinary evolution in people's attitudes to animals that has, in the space of a decade, transformed Hong Kong into a city of pet lovers.
At the time of the handover, there were only 50 to 60 small animal veterinarians in Hong Kong. Now there are an estimated 500 as more and more people keep cats, dogs and other mostly small animals as pets.
The factors driving the boom are both social and economic. 'If you look at the birth rate, people today are keeping pets more than having babies,' said Thomas Wong Kwok-shing, dean of Polytechnic University's faculty of health and social sciences. 'The way veterinary clinics have proliferated is almost unbelievable.'
Hong Kong's birth rate of less than one child per woman is now among the lowest in the world and Professor Wong believed couples with one or no children were factors in the trend towards pets.
'A lot of parents feel if they have one child, they want that child to be accompanied by something other than a domestic helper,' he said. 'A pet is a good way to give them that company.'
Animal welfare groups have expressed concerns that pets are too often being kept in high-rise apartment blocks by working couples and not exercised enough, but Professor Wong argued that knowledge of welfare issues was gradually improving.