Redundancies announced by Matilda Hospital this week are a symptom of Hong Kong's declining birth rate and of competition from the public sector, experts said yesterday.
At least one other private hospital has had to close its maternity wards while others have opened up new services in attempts to corner a greater share of a rapidly shrinking market, they said.
On Monday, the 95-year-old Matilda Hospital, on the Peak, which specialises in obstetrics care, announced 25 people - or 10 per cent of its workforce - had been laid off. The Adventist Hospital, in Stubbs Road, and its sister hospital in Tsuen Wan said on the same day they would cut the salaries of their 500 staff by between 1.58 per cent and 4.42 per cent from January next year, in line with civil service pay cuts.
Legislator Dr Lo Wing-lok, representing the medical sector, said: 'It is not the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is already here. We will see a continued contraction of the private sector partly because of the economic recession and partly because of the government's health-care policy.'
He pointed out that births in Hong Kong had dropped from 60,000 a year about 10 years ago to 40,000 now. He said public hospitals cared for 97 per cent of admissions, compared with 92 per cent in 1990.
Public hospital maternity admission costs $67 a day. Private care costs at least $3,000 a day.