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Hong Kong Leader Commends Hospital Readiness After Bird Flu Drill

Posted on: Tuesday, 8 November 2005, 09:00 CST

Text of report by Radio TV Hong Kong audio website on 8 November

[Newsreader] The chief executive, Donald Tsang, says public hospitals will be able to cope with a major outbreak of avian flu among people in Hong Kong. He was speaking after a visit to Tuen Mun Hospital, where the Hospital Authority held its first bird flu drill today. Altis Wong reports:

[Wong] About 70 staff, mostly from two public hospitals, took part in the exercise. It involved a scenario in which two patients were found to have the H5N1 virus. The chief executive said the trial was completed smoothly and had tested the effectiveness of current infection-control measures. He said he was told by professionals that, technically, Hong Kong had done enough to prepare for a possible flu pandemic. Mr Tsang said Hong Kong had learnt from the SARS outbreak and he was confident that medical staff would be able to cope with a major outbreak of avian flu.

[Tsang] We have made enormous headway since the outbreak of SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] - while this is not only in terms of resource acquisition, deployment of resources, communication between various units, even the equipment and the facilities within the hospitals, have all been improved: ICU facilities, special isolation facilities, all these are at international standard. But we are not complacent in this. We continue to learn from others' experience, advances made elsewhere and, particularly, we are participating in international seminars and we are on the alert on what WHO is going to issue on this subject. So this is a continuous process. Meanwhile, we will continue to do exercises in Hong Kong at hospital level, at territorial level.

[Wong] Mr Tsang said such trials were important even though the scale of this one was small.

[Tsang] I think experience is excellent. I think the trial must continue to polish the protocol, to ensure the communication between various operational units are totally in order and smooth, and all the protective measures that we have prepared are properly utilized. And I think this exercise is very good. But, of course, as I said, this is one of many exercises we are doing.

[Wong] The Hospital Authority plans to hold a much larger bird flu drill towards the end of this month.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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