Healthcare professionals from Guangdong province arrive at the West Kowloon Station in Hong Kong on April 17, 2023, as part of the Hospital Authority's Greater Bay Area Healthcare Talents Visiting Programme. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

A total of 83 medical workers from the Chinese mainland cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area arrived in Hong Kong in batches recently to boost cooperation on medical services and help ease the city’s acute shortage of medical employees.

This is the first batch of medical workers coming to the city under the Hospital Authority’s Greater Bay Area Healthcare Talents Visiting Programmes, which was launched last year and aims to invite over 300 mainland medical workers to the city in 2023 and 2024.

The HKSAR government launched a Special Support Scheme in November 2020 to commission the HKU-SZH to provide subsidized follow-up consultations for Hospital Authority patients

Welcoming the move, local residents expressed confidence in the professionalism of the mainland workers, hoping the exchange program will help improve local public hospitals’ efficiency, especially in terms of emergency services.

READ MORE: New approaches to boost the medical cooperation between SAR, mainland

Mainland doctors participating in the project will stay in Hong Kong for about a year, and nurses will stay for 10.5 months.

Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling welcomed the medical workers at Hong Kong West Kowloon Station on Monday. 

He said 70 nurses and three specialty doctors from Guangdong Province had arrived in Hong Kong by noon, while another three Chinese medicine experts will arrive later today and tomorrow. Seven doctors arrived in Hong Kong last week.

Fan said that the 70 nurses will work in seven hospital clusters, and the doctors will temporarily work in Kowloon East Cluster, Kowloon West Cluster and New Territories West Cluster. 

He added that a total of 300 nurses will arrive in Hong Kong over the next two years, and the second batch of about 100 nurses is expected to arrive around the end of this year. 

The average work experience of the nurses is over eight years. Some have worked in the field for over 20 years. All of them can speak Mandarin, English and Cantonese. They will receive additional training in clinical treatment and medical theories in Hong Kong. 

Yang Bo, a representative of the Health Commission of Guangdong Province, said some of the 83 medical workers came to Hong Kong last year and helped the city combat the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

She hopes that medical cooperation between Guangdong and Hong Kong will be deepened in the future through the GBA talent exchange program, especially on cross-border collaboration on medical projects and the cultivation of medical professionals, so as to inject more impetus into the medical development of the Greater Bay Area.

Hong Kong resident Amy Lim said she believes the arrival of mainland professionals will improve Hong Kong medical system’s work efficiency and enable local residents to enjoy more convenient services. 

She noted that due to manpower shortages, people need to wait for at least four to five hours at public hospitals for emergency services. 

She added that local residents do not need to worry about the professionalism of the mainland medical staff, as they are the nation’s top talents with a depth of experience, and they have passed the strict selection process put in place by the Hong Kong and mainland government.

She hopes the mainland professionals can help beef up public hospitals’ emergency services to serve local residents’ urgent medical needs. 

Another Hong Kong resident, Sze Ling, said she would definitely feel okay about the hospital arranging for a mainland doctor to diagnose her disease. As long as the doctors have good medical skills, she said, she will absolutely trust them and will not care much about where they are from.

On Monday, the Health Bureau also announced it will launch the Pilot Scheme for Supporting Patients of the Hospital Authority in Greater Bay Area on May 10, to enable eligible Hong Kong residents residing in the GBA to receive subsidized medical consultations at the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital (HKU-SZH).

READ MORE: Growing demand for HK medical services in Shenzhen

The bureau said the new scheme will offer a more effective approach to support the medical needs of these residents. It will also help the HKSAR government further analyze and assess Hong Kong residents’ habits in seeking medical care on the mainland — in particular their usage patterns of relevant services — and their effects on the Hong Kong public healthcare system. This will provide references for the government to study how to address the medical needs of these residents more effectively.

The HKSAR government launched a Special Support Scheme in November 2020 to commission the HKU-SZH to provide subsidized follow-up consultations for Hospital Authority patients who reside in mainland cities of the GBA and who experienced difficulties in going to Hong Kong hospitals during the pandemic.

The existing Special Support Scheme will end on May 9 this year and had served over 54,000 attendees by the end of February this year.