Foreign doctors working at Hong Kong's two medical schools are calling for medical licensing rules to be relaxed so they can run their own private practices without having to sit for an examination first.
But a member of the Medical Council, which requires foreign doctors to write its examinations for a licence to practise, said such a request should be rejected out of fairness and in the public interest.
The university doctors - some of them senior professors who have been teaching in Hong Kong for decades - are practising under 'limited registration'. They work in Hong Kong without having sat the Medical Council's licensing examination but their work is restricted to the teaching hospitals.
The issue of limited registration has become a hot topic since the Hospital Authority last month announced a plan to import about 20 overseas doctors to fill a manpower shortage.
As of the end of June, 154 foreign doctors were registered with the Medical Council under limited registrations, compared with 11,000 local doctors who work with full licences. Among these foreigners, 36 worked at the University of Hong Kong, 54 at Chinese University, two at the Hospital Authority and one at the Department of Health. The remaining 61 are so-called 'grandparents' - doctors who registered in the 1960s as employees with some community organisations.
Some professors told the South China Morning Post they believe the medical profession in Hong Kong 'is not open enough' to foreigners.