Hong Kong’s Chinese medicine doctors ‘could help during flu crisis’
Hospital Authority says clinics offering traditional remedies have not seen the steep rise in demand witnessed by doctors at mainstream hospitals
The city’s 18 government-supported Chinese medicine clinics could take up to 30 per cent more patients than they are currently, to help with the overload at public hospitals caused by the summer flu peak period, a senior Hospital Authority official has said.
Eric Ziea Tat-chi, chief of the authority’s Chinese medicine department, said traditional remedies could help alleviate some symptoms of the illness, but that his doctors had not had anything like the huge increase in demand seen at mainstream public hospitals lately.
Ziea’s announcement came as doctors and nurses struggle to cope with throngs of patients hit by a summer flu strain that has killed more than 200 people since May.
On Sunday, emergency rooms at mainstream public hospitals dealt with 5,562 people and admitted 831, helping to push the occupancy rate at medical wards up to 110 per cent of capacity.
The 18 public Chinese medicine centres – jointly managed by the authority, three local universities and 10 non-governmental organisations – got more than 27,300 visits for flu symptoms from April 1 to last Thursday, or just under 250 per day. Ziea said the number of flu patients his clinics treated was up by 1.5 per cent on the same period last year.
“We haven’t seen a massive influx of patients yet. We would closely monitor with the operating NGOs and adjust operating hours and manpower if necessary,” Ziea said.