勞永樂

English

Dr Lo Wing-lok (1954–2015) was a Hong Kong doctor and politician. A specialist in infectious diseases, he was president of the Hong Kong Medical Association and served in the Legislative Council for the Medical functional constituency. Born on 13 September 1954 into a grassroots family, he grew up in a cubicle flat in Sheung Wan and later in public housing in North Point, attended St. Paul's College and then entered the University of Hong Kong's medical school. After further study in Britain he returned to Hong Kong as one of the city's few infectious disease specialists. He came to public attention during the 1997 avian flu outbreak, when he called for the mass culling of chickens, and he again offered his professional views during the 2003 SARS and 2009 swine flu outbreaks. In the 2000 Legislative Council election he won the Medical functional constituency, sitting from October 2000 to September 2004 while also serving as president of the Hong Kong Medical Association, and he chaired the council's Panel on Health Services in 2002–2003. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2003. He lost the Medical seat to Kwok Ka-ki in 2004, ran for the Hong Kong Island geographical constituency in 2008 with more than 20,000 votes but was not elected, and failed again in 2012. In 2006 he helped found the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats and became one of its vice-chairmen, resigning from the party in December 2007. He was a vegetarian and a newspaper columnist, and died of lung cancer on 9 May 2015, aged 60.