Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance
Advance Decision on Life-sustaining Treatment Ordinance (the “Ordinance”) was passed at the Legislative Council on 20 November 2024 and gazetted on 29 November 2024. Following a buffering period of 18 months, the Ordinance shall come into effect in May 2026.
The Ordinance establishes legislative frameworks for advance medical directives (“AMDs”), provides legal protection to patients, medical professionals, as well as rescuers and empowers terminally-ill patients with a greater degree of autonomy.
AMDs are advance instructions made by an adult patient who are mentally capable of deciding on a life-sustaining treatment. The directive clearly indicates the wishes for refusing life-sustaining treatments when the patient reaches a medical condition of being terminally ill or being in a persistent vegetative state and state of irreversible coma or being in other end-stage, irreversible, life-limiting condition.
The Ordinance follows the “cautious making, easy revoking” principle, safeguarding the making of AMDs and facilitating easy revocation. As the AMDs concerns matters of life and death, the Ordinance allows makers subsequently change his/her preferences and revoke the directives.
This is to protect lives and to avoid irreversible consequences.
Making of Advance Medical Directive:
• maker must be an adult over 18 years of age;
• maker must be mentally capable of deciding on a life-sustaining treatment;
• all instructions in the directive must be presented in a clear way;
• adopt prescribed form;
• maker must sign in the presence of not less than 2 witnesses;
• the 2 witnesses are not an interest person of the maker;
• one of the witnesses must be a registered medical practitioner; and
• the other witness must be an adult over 18 years of age.
Revocation of Advance Medical Directive
An AMD can be revoked through the following means at any time, given that the maker is mentally capable of deciding on a life-sustaining treatment:
• in writing (whether in paper form or in electronic form);
• signs Part 5 of the prescribed form of AMD;
• burns, tears or crosses out the content and signs each page of the AMD;
• verbally or expresses the intention to revoke the AMD by other means (such as nodding, shaking head and using sign language);
• makes another AMD; or
• revokes the AMD in the electronic system.
The Hong Kong Government plans to introduce a designated electronic system for making, storing, revoking and retrieving electronic AMDs through “eHealth”.
Please feel free to contact us should you have any enquiries on Advance Medical Directives.
