I refer to the reports which have appeared in the South China Morning Post saying that a 'donor liver was wasted'.
The important issue of liver transplantation cannot be presented in a simplified manner. The problem you described not only illustrates the escalating cost of hi-tech medical therapy, but also exposes the medical, ethical and social complexity of health-care financing.
I want to present some figures so readers can draw their own conclusions:
Each liver transplantation costs $1 million excluding subsequent drug maintenance and clinic visits; 100 liver transplants will therefore cost $100 million per year;
The annual budget of the Hospital Authority is $28 billion. And the annual drug budget of a major hospital (for example, Queen Mary Hospital) with 95,000 admissions and more than 500,000 clinic visits is only $180 million;
The SAR spent 14 per cent of its annual budget on public health-care in the last financial year;
Due to the low tax rate, the Hong Kong SAR spends an equivalent of 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product on public health-care. Similar figures for Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, the UK, Japan, Canada, and the US are 3.1 per cent, 4.9 per cent, seven per cent, seven per cent, 7.2 per cent, 9.6 per cent, and 16 per cent, respectively;
