Afford

On the face of it, you may think my question doesn't make sense: Although the treatment is expensive and we have to use 1% of the budget for a small group of patient, it is obviously affordable.

But no, because there are more than one kind of orphan disease.

To be exact, the European Organization for Rare Diseases (EURORDIS) estimates that as many as 5,000 to 7,000 distinct rare diseases exist, and as much as 6% to 8% of the population of the European Union is affected by one.

In other words, you expect some 500,000 Hong Kong people have one rare disease or another.

You see, if the treatment of every orphan disease is equally expensive, the total cost would be HK$800 billion per year - 20 times of the entire health care expenditure of Hong Kong.