Only 371 nonresident pregnant women sought emergency admission in the nine weeks since new regulations came into force February 1 - a drop of 75.5 percent when compared with the same period in 2006 and 67 percent lower than in January this year, the Hospital Authority said in the paper to be discussed Monday by Legco's panel on health services.

The regulations were introduced in response to an audit report last year which suggested hundreds of mainland women were abusing Hong Kong's medical system by getting emergency admission to give birth and then absconding without paying their bills.

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To ensure local pregnant women had priority to proper obstetric services, in addition to keeping its books in order, the authority early this year insisted on a proper booking system for nonresidents and doubled the charge for obstetric services for nonresidents.

The Immigration Department also introduced measures to stop at the land border women well advanced in pregnancy and who did not have prior bookings with Hong Kong hospitals.

According to the Legco paper, these measures have had the desired effect.

"Judging from the statistics for February and March 2007, the new obstetric service arrangements have been effective in establishing a control mechanism on the number of nonlocal women coming to Hong Kong to give birth," the paper said.

It said between February 1 and April 4, the number of births by nonlocal women in Hong Kong was 3,825 which was, on average, about 4.1 percent lower than the same period in 2006 and 28 percent lower than last January.

In the same period, public and private hospitals handled 5,952 and 4,547 deliveries by local and nonlocal women, respectively.

The shortage of obstetric services became a hot issue toward the end of last year when a number of local pregnant women took to the streets, claiming there were being denied privacy in public hospitals, had to sleep in corridors and forced to feed their babies outside hospital toilets. In addition, Immigration Department data showed that the number of births by mainland women had more than doubled over four years from 10,128 in 2003 to 26,132 in 2006.

A total of 65,195 babies were born in Hong Kong last year.

With the health system facing further pressure as a result of mainland mothers giving birth in Hong Kong without prior antenatal care, the government was forced to act.

From February 1, the authority raised obstetric service fees from HK$20,000 to HK$39,000 for those who had previous antenatal examinations and to HK$48,000 for those who sought hospital admission without prior arrangement.