Editorial | Mainland China medical staff are owed our thanks

When the pandemic is declared over, and life returns to normal, we will remain indebted to dedicated frontline medical staff who laboured above and beyond the call of duty, often at risk to their own health, to see us through it. They include mainland medical staff who, for the first time in 25 years since the handover, have crossed the border as a group to help. No one would have thought in 1997, with China still fighting poverty, the city would call on them in a medical emergency, or could learn something from them about dealing with it.

Many of them are veterans of the mainland’s campaign to control Covid-19 over the past two years. Their arrival from last week, on a mission to help turn back the surging, deadly fifth wave of infection, is a welcome boost to stressed health care resources. Unfortunately it has prompted reactions that belie the spirit of the gesture.

Questions have been raised about how Covid-19 patients can lodge complaints about the care given by doctors, nurses and other health care professionals from the mainland, and whether they will fit in. A chart allegedly documenting division of duties that belittles the role of the visitors went viral on social media. Everyone should heed the plea from Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to stop such divisive comment when the city needs unity. Since the Medical Council of Hong Kong can only hear complaints against local practitioners, the Hospital Authority said it would bear the ultimate responsibility for the mainland medical staff.

It should be remembered that they are volunteers who are making an extra sacrifice of normal life to help Hong Kong through the current crisis because the city has struggled to handle it alone. They may be trained in a different system and there may be different philosophies in treating patients. But doctors anywhere can have different approaches to new challenges. We are talking about measures to help save lives and reduce suffering. There is no place for unsubstantiated disquiet when it comes to effective life-saving measures. It comes down to the sanctity of life and putting aside perceptions and bias. Do we really want to go back, just two or three weeks, when the government was at a loss as to how to stem the tide?