Ban on risky surgery at beauty salons after death of therapy patient
Government rules to close loophole after 2012 fatality during beauty clinic transfusion therapy
Doctors are to be banned from carrying out high-risk medical procedures in beauty salons or other private premises without Department of Health approval, the has learned.
The changes come after one woman died and three others suffered serious injuries following blood-transfusion therapy at a beauty clinic in 2012.
The new rules - to be put forward by a Food and Health Bureau working group panel set up to investigate medical regulation - will close a loophole allowing operations, even those involving general anaesthetic, to be carried out anywhere.
"Now there is no regulation to define what procedures a doctor can perform outside a hospital," said one panel member. "We do not want to regulate every medical procedure, but there should be rules to ban high-risk ones carried out in substandard premises without facilities for emergency treatment."
Details of the licensing system, including the penalties for breaching the rules, have yet to be decided.
Medical sector lawmaker Dr Leung Ka-lau urged the panel not to go too far, in case it led doctors to being prosecuted for performing on-the-spot emergency operations. "If there is an emergency, a doctor will have to perform medical procedures on patients wherever they are, even if they are on the street," Leung said.
