"Public hospitals will provide local expectant mothers with the necessary obstetric services under all circumstances," the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau wrote in a statement.
"Local pregnant mothers should not worry about denial of access to such services in public hospitals at the time of delivery."
The statement came after an unprecedented protest by dozens of pregnant women Sunday who vented their fury at the shortage of services made worse by the large number of pregnant mainlanders who are abusing the system.
Protesters complained some pregnant women had to give birth outside the ward with no privacy. Others had had to sleep in the corridor or sit next to the toilet while feeding their babies.
Speaking after a public event Monday, Hospital Authority chief executive Shane Soloman acknowledged the problem, but pledged to add 20 beds in public hospitals in the short term and to recruit more staff.
It is less of a problem in Macau as most of the mainlanders seeking hospital services there can easily become Macau residents.
Unlike Hong Kong, which requires at least a HK$6.5 million investment to earn residency rights, mainlanders need to invest only HK$1.5 million in Macau to become residents and enjoy free medical services.
According to a spokesman for Kiang Wu Hospital, one of the two hospitals in Macau, half the patients in the obstetrics services department are mainlanders, mostly from Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities.
Meanwhile, the authority is considering the collection of advance payments from all non-emergency public hospital patients - both local and from the mainland - to reduce the number of default bills. Details are to be released by the end of this year.
Director of Audit Benjamin Tang Kwok-bun said last week the Hospital Authority had accumulated bad debts of up to HK$322 million over the past five years, of which nearly two-thirds was owed by non-Hong Kong residents.
Joseph Lee Kok-long, a lawmaker for the health services sector, has expressed concern at the number of mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong public hospitals.
"The authorities should make it harder for women who don't pay their hospital bills to get a birth certificate," Lee said.
Pregnant women from the mainland who deliver their babies in public hospitals in Hong Kong are charged HK$20,000 under the obstetrics package, which covers delivery and maintenance fees for the first three days of hospitalization. However, some of these women reportedly wait until the last minute before going to hospital, knowing they will not be denied services in an emergency situation. The bureau spokesman said that, between January and September 2006, 8,388 non-Hong Kong resident women gave birth in public hospitals, a decrease of about 20 percent from the 10,478 cases in the same period of 2005.
However, with an increase in the number of local pregnant women giving birth, public hospitals handled 28,830 cases between January and September 2006, which was only about 4 percent lower than for the same period in 2005, when there were 30,126 cases.
The spokesman said the hospital authority had already taken a number of relief measures, such as increasing the number of training places for midwives, recruiting more doctors to receive specialist training in obstetrics and gynecology, filling vacancies in obstetrics and gynecology specialist posts as quickly as possible, and improving the arrangements for shift duties of nurses through more flexible human resources management practices.
Some critics argue the ultimate solution to stop the influx of mainlanders is to amend Basic Law Article 24, which stipulates Chinese citizens born in Hong Kong are permanent residents of the SAR.
However, any amendment of the Basic Law is considered a sensitive matter to both Hong Kong and Beijing.