Opinion | Hong Kong’s public hospitals are struggling with our ageing population, not an influx of mainland migrants

Like other high-income countries with a low birth rate and a long life expectancy, Hong Kong’s elderly will increase demand for public health services. Meanwhile, the influx of mainland migrants has served to balance out the population’s age curve

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Patients wait at the accident and emergency department of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei during the flu season in late December. Photo: Felix Wong

Published: 6:02am, 27 Feb 2019Updated: 6:12am, 27 Feb 2019

While Hong Kong’s overstretched public hospitals have been in the news lately, the burden on the public health-care system and the increasing workload of medical staff has long been the subject of concern. Some have blamed migrants from the mainland for the overcrowding of the hospital system. This is unfortunate and inaccurate.

In fact, like many high-income Asian countries, Hong Kong hospitals are grappling with a rapidly ageing society, which is the result of a prolonged low birth rate and long life expectancy. In addition to increasing demand for hospital services, Hong Kong also faces rising health-care costs. Government expenditure on health care in Hong Kong has been increasing at the alarming rate of 10 to 15 per cent per annum. The Hospital Authority, which is fully funded by the government, provides 90 per cent of the city’s hospital inpatient services.

The unmanageable expansion of health-care costs has become a major public finance issue in many countries. The United States spends about 17 per cent of its gross domestic product on health care, but the country’s health indicators are not particularly impressive, and American life expectancy has been reducing since 2015.

In the United Kingdom, the much acclaimed National Health Service (NHS) is facing serious financial and sustainability problems, which would ultimately lead to deterioration in the quality of hospital care.

Contrary to popular belief, Hong Kong’s population growth has slowed down in the past two decades, with an annual growth rate of only 0.5 per cent compared to 2 to 3 per cent in the ’80s. Moreover, the influx of new migrants has served to slow the ageing of Hong Kong’s population, without the city facing depopulation as Japan has.

Activists and legislators join hospital staff in protesting against the increasing workload at public hospitals and demanding the government reduce the intake of migrants from mainland China, in Mong Kok on February 17. Photo: Dickson Lee