Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that there were 560 doctors and 1,169 nurses engaging in the 3 hospitals of Macao in 2009. Number of in-patient beds totalled 1,109 and the occupancy rate of in-patient beds stood at 73.8%, down by 4.6 percentage points over 2008. Besides, a total of 14,000 surgical operations and 306,000 emergency treatments were carried out in 2009. Meanwhile, there were 495 establishments providing primary health care services, with 383 being private clinics, engaging 723 doctors and 450 nurses. A total of 2,100,000 medical consultations were provided in 2009, up by 8.0% year-on-year, attributable to the pandemic of H1N1 (Swine Influenza) and the implementation of the Healthcare Subsidy Scheme that induced medical consultations at private clinics to soar by 16.2%. In 2009, ratio of health professionals to the population saw improvement compared with 2008, with number of doctors per 1,000 population reaching 2.4 and that of nurses reaching 2.8, up by 0.1 and 0.2 percentage point respectively year-on-year. Number of in-patient beds per 1,000 population rose from 1.9 in 2008 to 2.0 in 2009. Number of blood donors increased by 1.5% year-on-year to 9,308 and the median age was 24.3. Moreover, the Blood Donation Centre provided 20,000 units of blood and blood components to the hospitals. In addition, there were 228 establishments providing Chinese medicine and therapy services, engaging 182 doctors of Chinese medicine and 160 Chinese herbalists, providing 923,000 consultations of Chinese medicine and therapy services.
