Men flocking to public clinics for Viagra may have to wait more than three years for an appointment, a urologist at the Prince of Wales Hospital has warned.
The Government gazetted its approval of the registration of the anti-impotence drug yesterday but the first supplies will not be available until early next week.
Doctors believe that hundreds and even thousands of men will swamp public clinics. Private pharmacists also said many customers had showed an eagerness to get the drug.
Dr Peter Chan Siu-foon, chief of the Urology and Kidney Transplantation division at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, warned that current resources were far from adequate to cope with the expected demand.
The average waiting time for erectile dysfunction treatment at the Prince of Wales Hospital is 20 months.
Dr Chan, also a member of the Hospital Authority's expert panel on Viagra, said that patients not suffering life-threatening illnesses would not be given priority at public urology specialist clinics. Erectile dysfunction is common among older men, with 60 per cent aged between 40 and 70 in either a moderate or severe stage, he said.