Hong Kong is a popular destination for tourists from the Chinese mainland. But in recent times, it hasn’t been the sights, history or food that many have made the trip for, but for Hong Kong’s imported drugs.
This is a common sight in Hong Kong, especially in touristic areas like Causeway Bay.
But these tourists from the Chinese mainland are not here for luxury brands; they’ve come for imported medicine.
But the surge in tourists from the mainland begs the question: just how much cheaper are imported medicines in Hong Kong?
A bottle of Herceptin, a drug for breast cancer treatment, is 60% more expensive on the mainland than in Hong Kong.
A bottle of Glivec, a Swiss drug that treats leukemia, costs 44% more.
So what accounts for this huge gap in prices?
Hong Kong’s system of separating pharmacies from hospitals also helps reduce the chance of doctors being bribed by pharmaceutical companies.
The rush of tourists to Hong Kong follows in the footsteps of the melamine scare in 2008, which led to soaring prices of milk powder on the mainland. If nothing changes in the long-term, imported medicine could become the next milk powder for cross-border traders.