Leung ready to treat city to its first TCM hospital
C.Y. also set to announce major regular hospital for Kai Tak, and give elderly a helping hand
The establishment of the city's first traditional Chinese medicine hospital, a major new hospital at Kai Tak and health-care initiatives for the elderly are expected to be announced in Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's second policy address today, the South China Morning Post has learned.
But the focus on medical care will stop short of offering any groundbreaking proposals to help deal with the pressure on health services caused by an ageing population - it is predicted that about a third of Hongkongers will be aged 65 or above by 2041.
There have been calls for a traditional Chinese medicine hospital to be set up in Hong Kong for years, with Baptist University wanting to develop a major TCM teaching hospital adjacent to its School of Chinese Medicine, on the southern part of the former Lee Wai Lee campus.
At present the government has asked to rezone part of the site for housing purposes.
One of its postgraduate students, German-born Marcus Gadau, remarked last year that there were more than five Chinese medicine hospitals in Germany and none in Hong Kong.
The new 2,000-bed hospital in Kai Tak will have an emergency department and is expected to cost the government tens of billion of dollars, "but the site has yet to be determined", according to a government source.
At first, it is expected to be used as a temporary home for Jordan's Queen Elizabeth Hospital which, at half a century old, is in desperate need of renovation.