The Legislative Council Panel on Health Services held a special meeting to discuss issues on non-local trained doctors working in Hong Kong.

The panel said when deciding on the list of approved medical qualifications, the medium of instruction of the overseas medical schools concerned must be the same as that of the two local universities' medical schools. However, both of them use English as the medium of instruction.

Lawmaker Edward Leung Hei from the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong said using the medium of instruction as a condition is a "moat" to protect the interests of the local medical sector, which will prevent mainland medical school graduates from coming to Hong Kong.

Medical and health services sector lawmaker David Lam Tzit-yuen said many medical vocabularies were in Latin instead of English, while doctors mostly speak Chinese when teaching apprentices to communicate with patients. He said it was a shame to claim that only English was used in medical education in Hong Kong.

Lo said the authorities did not restrict doctors from any place from practicing in Hong Kong and that he personally believed that there are highly qualified doctors everywhere in the world.

He said he had met with many good medical workers on the mainland, including the hospital where he used to work. Many of the follow-up consultations of Hong Kong people on the mainland will be referred to mainland doctors.