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Health-care groups and educators yesterday called on the government not to cut the number of places for trainee physiotherapists and occupational therapists at Polytechnic University.

They said there was already a shortage of these health professionals by international standards.

The university's Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, the Hong Kong Physiotherapy Association, the Hong Kong Occupational Therapy Association and legislator Michael Mak Kwok-fung held a meeting at Polytechnic University yesterday to argue places be increased. Representatives from at least a dozen other health groups attended.

The student intake of the university's physiotherapy and occupational programmes for the 2004-2005 academic year are due to be slashed by 25 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. Last year 80 undergraduates were taken on to study physiotherapy. This number will be cut to 50 in 2004-2005.

Occupational therapists are to be reduced from 60 to 40. This is less than half the 1998-99 intake.

Christina Hui Chan Wan-ying,  head of the department of rehabilitation sciences, said the reduction followed the Hospital Authority's freeze on positions, as well as university funding cuts.

'There have never been enough therapists at public hospitals. We will have more elderly people prone to chronic diseases and accidents in the next decade, and the ratio of physiotherapists to population in Hong Kong is only one third of those in Canada and US,' Ms Hui said.

Student numbers should not be based on hospital demand alone, she added. 'Community centres and private clinics cater for two-thirds of the patients.'

Mr Mak said thousands of patients with chronic illnesses, as well as elderly people, had been suffering from delayed rehabilitation because of a shortage of therapists.

'Rehabilitation and disease prevention are very important because these people, once healed, would be able to work, saving the government millions of dollars in medical aid and welfare,' he said.

Chan Kai-ming, president of the International Federation of Sports Medicine, said the mainland was looking to Hong Kong for leadership in providing physiotherapy and occupational treatment to athletes because Polytechnic University was the only institution providing internationally qualified physiotherapy and occupational therapy programmes in China.



Therapist numbers must not be cut, say health-care groups