(To watch the whole press conference with sign language interpretation, click here.)

The Government will provide sufficient resources to the Hospital Authority, Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan said today.

Speaking at a press conference in the morning on the initiatives in the 2020-21 Budget, Prof Chan pointed out the Government has provided increased resources to the authority in the past few years.

“Not only the year-on-year increase for the Hospital Authority, but also, we have put in place a budgeting system so that every year there is a three-year cycle type of budget so that the Hospital Authority can better plan their services because they would already know that in the next year they would be getting an amount that is based on population increase and also demographic increase.”

Prof Chan also noted that the Budget announced a recurrent funding of $75 billion for the authority in 2020-21, an increase of 35% from 2017-18.

“I think the accumulative increase is important because actually the pie has grown bigger and bigger every year. So, we will continue, obviously, to monitor the situation to ensure there are enough resources for our public healthcare system.”