Hong Kong’s terminally ill will have more say in medical treatments and deaths under proposed amendment to law
- Proposed amendments aim to give legal status to advance directives, a medical document allowing dying patients to choose their treatments
- New law will protect healthcare professionals from lawsuits if they respect the patients’ wishes
The proposed amendments, long overdue after a public consultation in 2019, aim to give advance directives, medical documents used by dying patients to specify which treatments they want or refuse, statutory power.
The discussion was reignited after the directives became more popular among patients. The number of people rejecting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) jumped from 325 in 2013 to 1,742 in 2021.
But without legal status, the directives have been subject to dispute by patients’ families.
The document at present is only legally binding based on the general requirement of patients’ consent for medical treatment under the common law.
“People will need to follow the instructions in the advance directive if it has legal status,” said Roger Chung Yat-nork, an associate professor from Chinese University’s school of public health.
“[Currently] the document doesn’t have a legislative status, and whether people should follow it is murky.”
