The Health, Welfare & Food Bureau is studying the 45 recommendations in the Hospital Authority Review Panel's report on the SARS Outbreak released today.

The Government said it welcomes any recommendations that further help the Hospital Authority and the administration to enhance the prevention of and fight against infectious disease.

Some of the recommendations, such as improvements to hospital isolation facilities and maintaining a suitable stock of protective gear for health care workers, have already been implemented.

However, the Government said the Hospital Authority Board has taken the view that the panel has not verified some facts or given parties a reasonable opportunity to respond before finalisation of the report.

The board also feels that for those parties outside the remit of the panel's terms of reference, the limitations are more obvious and may lead to questions regarding the validity of some of its findings.

The bureau said there are a significant number of comments and conclusions in the Report that relate to the Government, particularly the bureau and Department of Health.

It said it is uncertain how the report came to formulate comments and conclusions on the bureau and the department, as the remit given by panel is for the review to focus on how the authority has managed and responded to the SARS outbreak. And there was limited contact between the panel and bureau, and between the panel and the department in the review process.

It said it is evident there are limitations in the process by which the panel came to comments and conclusions with regard to parties outside the remit given to it by the board.

The Government appreciates this may have been due to the short timeframe within which the report had to be completed.

It has pointed out the limitations observed to the board, which include:

* the nature and process of the review was such that key information relating to the Government's actions had not all been assembled by the panel. As a result, some of the comments and conclusions made of the Government are questionable;

* in the review process, neither the bureau or the department were asked to confirm the "facts" referred to in the report or to provide further relevant information for the panel's attention;

* they have also not been given an opportunity to make our representations on the panel's observations and comments as a matter of procedural fairness. It appears that the due process of verification of facts with the parties concerned and giving the parties concerned a reasonable opportunity to respond has not been carried out;

* some of the facts quoted in the report are different from those provided by the department. In some areas, relevant information could have been provided by the parties concerned had they been given the opportunity to do so;

* the report has made comments and drawn conclusions with the benefit of hindsight and not based on the knowledge and information available at the particular time; and,

* some of its judgements were made without regard to the whole picture of all the communications between the Government and the community. In some other cases, the judgements were made on the basis of the panel's interpretation of one or two statements alone, and taken out of context.

The bureau said, as an example of the questionable comments and conclusions, the report mentioned there was "the absence of a clear chain of command" and "no central decision making body", while in fact in the early stages of the epidemic, a number of measures were taken by the Government to delineate a clear chain of command, including the establishment of the bureau' task force and the Chief Executive's Steering Committee.

The report did not mention any of these bodies. The comment that there was no clear chain of command/no central decision-making body was unjustified.

Despite reservations over the validity of these comments and conclusions, the bureau said it will work closely with the authority board and management to implement the recommendations that will help better prevent infectious diseases and deal with an outbreak.

The department said the report is primarily the authority's internal investigation report to review its management, organisation structure and response in dealing with the SARS outbreak. It said the panel had limited contact with the department.

It said on August 2, that the panel raised specific questions with department for the express purpose of reviewing and assessing the authority's actions in a proper context.

In reply to the department's comprehensive response on August 18, the panel asked further questions on August 20 and a reply was given on August 28.

The department's two letters have been uploaded to its website.

It noted that some of the facts quoted in the report are different from those provided by the department in its two letters.

The panel did not interview department officials nor give it an opportunity to make representations on the panel's observations and comments.

The department has grave reservations about the comments and observations made by the panel and the conclusions drawn.

In respect of the recommendations made by the panel on the prevention and control of infectious diseases, the department said it will respond actively and positively. A number of the recommendations are already being implemented.