On a secluded terrace looking over the Sha Tin valley, a middle-aged man sits next to a frail woman in a wheelchair. She is his mother, and cancer is fast consuming her body. Under spreading shade trees next to flowering shrubs, they quietly chat. The wind sighs in the branches. Bird calls echo from the hills.
It is a lovely place to die.
Maybe for not much longer. Hard-eyed Hospital Authority accountants with a passion to trim expenditure are examining the cost-effectiveness of Sha Tin's Bradbury Hospice.
In an answer as carefully shrouded as a recently departed patient, an authority spokesman says: 'We are in discussion with Bradbury Hospice on the possible modes to deliver hospice services and ways to improve its cost-efficiency in future. There is no fixed plan at the present moment.'
I am told there is a strong possibility the institution will be closed.
Lo Wing-lok, the Legco member representing the medical profession, says he has heard the rumours.
