HONG KONG: Kwong Wah Hospital (KWH), a major acute hospital serving Kowloon West, will undergo a large-scale two-phase redevelopment comprising a Chinese medicine unit and a Chinese medicine hospital.

With the exception of the Tung Wah Museum and outpatients' department, all existing facilities will be torn down. The redevelopment will be completed in 2016.

Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, which operates the KWH, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hospital Authority. Secretary for Food and Health York Chow, a special guest at the signing ceremony, hailed Tung Wah's efforts in recent years, to provide outpatient services in Chinese medicine , to promote research and development in Chinese medicine and to combine Chinese and western treatments.

Since 2006, KWH has provided both Chinese and Western outpatient and inpatient services.

Tung Wah chairman Patrick Ma said apart from outpatient services, the Chinese medicine hospital will also serve as a clinical training ground for Chinese medical practitioners.

Hospital Authority chairman Anthony Wu said he was pleased the KWH redevelopment will go ahead after all. "As (Taiwan leader) Ma Ying-jeou was born here, you know how old the building is," he remarked wryly. "If the hospital is not redeveloped, I am afraid cases of things going missing and wrong prescriptions will happen again."

He also thanked the government for providing funding for the redevelopment despite the fiscal deficit in the current financial climate.

Dr Andrew Yip, KWH's deputy chief executive, added that work will begin on the first phase in 2011 and on the second phase in 2014. Emergency and outpatient services will continue as usual during the redevelopment work. The floor area of the renewal will increase by 50 percent but the bed space will remain at around 1,200.

Although he did not have an exact cost at hand, he estimated the cost would be several billion dollars. The government will bear a large portion of the building cost. Tung Wah also will carry out community fund raising to assist with the purchase of equipment.

Dr Yip said the Chinese medicine hospital, which has about 200 beds, will be the principal feature of the redevelopment, meeting the community's need for Chinese medicine services.

The Chinese medicine community called the planned Chinese medical facility at KWH a good platform for collaboration between Chinese and Western medicine.

Yeung Wing-fai, a representative from the Hong Kong Chinese Medicine Concern Group welcomed the proposal to build Chinese medical wards at public hospitals after years of discussion.

"The Chinese-Western collaboration will give patients more choices and provide them better treatment," he said.

However, he noted there would be technical difficulties when both Chinese and Western medical services are offered in wards.

(HK Edition 03/03/2009 page1)