The health chief last night said he had been disappointed to receive a report that failed to resolve the mystery of how a baby's body disappeared from a hospital mortuary.
Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok said he was disappointed the panel investigating the disappearance at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital had failed to clarify the incident.
'The government and the Hospital Authority have devoted a lot of resources to improving the management system of mortuaries over the past few years. It is totally unacceptable that the family of the patient has had to go through unnecessary suffering if the case was caused by human error,' he said.
He had asked the authority to take appropriate disciplinary action against staff members involved in the case. It should also revisit mortuary management to prevent similar incidents in future, he said.
As for the Caritas Medical Centre case, Dr Chow said the authority had identified those responsible and taken disciplinary action accordingly.
'Shouldering responsibility for mishandling the incident is necessary,' he said. 'It is more important that the HA staff can learn from the incident and establish a culture of serving patients ... taking patients' benefit as their priority.'
