Thirty per cent of patients admitted to public hospitals are given antibiotics, a Hospital Authority audit shows.
A third of these are given two types of antibiotics. And 3 per cent of all patients suffer various kinds of infections after admission.
Some of the hospital-acquired infections are caused by drug-resistant bacteria, the so-called superbugs, the audit found. Hong Kong's hospital-acquired infection rate of 3 per cent is at the lower end of the international scale, which in some countries reaches 10 per cent.
'The local figures are not alarming,' said Dr Dominic Tsang Ngai-chong, the Hospital Authority's chief infection-control officer. 'Many patients admitted to public hospitals suffer rather serious diseases and the use of antibiotics is necessary to save life. Some need several types of drugs to control the infections.'
But a leading microbiologist warned that the spread of one superbug - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) - was getting 'out of control' in public hospitals, and said many countries used antibiotics far more sparingly.
Professor Yuen Kwok-yuen, head of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong, said the antibiotics prevalence rate in Scandinavian countries and some European countries was in single digits.
Yuen said: 'It is worrying that now between 30 and 50 per cent of all Staphylococcus aureus cultured at public hospitals laboratories are resistant to methicillin, compared with just single digits 20 years ago. Compared with many European countries, Hong Kong has been too slow in fighting against drug resistance.'