Allocating more resources to develop family and community medicine and resolve manpower shortage in public hospitals could help curb the spread of flu virus in the community, doctors told the government yesterday.

The Hong Kong Medical Association and medical constituency legislator Kwok Ka-ki yesterday called a press conference to highlight the importance of family medicine, an area in which the territory lags far behind the UK, USA and Australia.

He also referred to a written reply from the Food and Health Bureau that public hospital doctors have to see about 80 patients on an 8-hour work day, meaning a doctor has only about five minutes for each patient.

Referring to the ongoing spread of influenza, he said: "Five minutes per patient are not even enough for the doctors to understand the patients' conditions or do simple checks. This situation puts both the doctors and patients at risk."

He called on the government to strengthen cooperation between private and public sectors so as to alleviate the workload of public hospital doctors.

Given the huge budget surplus, Kwok suggested the government provide HK$500 billion to promote family medicine, for example, training of family practitioners.

On the same occasion, medical association president Choi Kin said if family medicine is well developed in Hong Kong, less patients will need to go to emergency wards because family practitioners can handle simple diseases like cough and fever at an early stage.

Meanwhile, unions of public doctors cited inadequate manpower and long working hours as part of the reasons for the spread of influenza at a Legislative Council Panel on Health Services meeting yesterday.

Although the Hospital Authority vowed to cut short their working hours to 66 hours weekly within two years, the doctors said such move was unrealistic as the government could not lessen their workload without more resources and manpower.

(HK Edition 03/11/2008 page1)