Dr Donald Li Kwok Tung is a specialist in Family Medicine in private practice in Hong Kong and the President of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. He holds a BA from Cornell University, USA, and an MBBS from the University of Hong Kong.
Dr Li is the Honorary Treasurer and member at large of the World Organization of Family Doctors (WONCA) World Executive Council and Censor of the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians. He is also Chairman of the governing committee of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness and Response Institute (HKJC DPRI) of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine.
Dr Li has served HKU as an Honorary Professor of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, Honorary Treasurer of the HKU Medical Alumni Association and Senior Member of the HKU Foundation. He has lent his experience and expertise to the University’s students too by being a Mentor in the HKU Mentorship Programme (1998-2007).
He is a Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians, Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Honorary Fellow of the Hong Kong College of Dental Surgeons.
Dr Li is an active member of many governmental and public health bodies, both in Hong Kong and on the Mainland, and also dedicates much of his professional time to academia and teaching.
He was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 2006 and awarded a Silver Bauhinia Star in 2011.
Citation written and delivered by Professor Gabriel LEUNG, Dean of Medicine
作福國民: each of these four characters marks one generation of the Li family. Male offsprings of the most recent four adult generations have been named accordingly by adopting the relevant character as their middle name, thereby the family’s ethos is indelibly etched into each member’s identity. Thus every Li is expected to live their lives “for the wellbeing of our compatriots”.
As a third-generation Li and therefore with the middle character “Kwok” (國), if one were to count from his grandfather’s generation or in fact a fifth-generation member tracing back to the first generation to have put down roots in Hong Kong from Guangdong’s Heshan (廣東鶴山), our honorand has more than upheld the family’s nominal motto.
Doctor Donald Li is first and foremost a family physician. He belongs to an earlier generation of primary care specialists long before the profession became widely acknowledged as the key to good population health. Through his personal achievements, he has made those of us who toil in the less-than-glamorous coalface of first-contact medicine proud of our work. By his presidency of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, he has shown that humble “GPs” can reach the commanding heights once reserved for those who wield knives and lasers or look down microscopes and endoscopes.
Importantly for Hong Kong that has always lived on the crevice between Kipling’s east and west of yesteryear or latterly on the fringe of a massive reawakened nation, Doctor Li has taken every opportunity to convince his mainland counterparts of the merits of the “Hong Kong model”. Much of the vanguard developments in the Beijing and Shanghai primary care scenes are due in no small part to his persuasive efforts. With the most recent promulgation of a standardized “5+3” training pathway for primary care doctors nationwide, his decade-long patient tilling will enable Hong Kong to contribute disproportionately further and deeper.
Keen to maintain Hong Kong’s global presence, Doctor Li is the second ever Chinese member of the World Organisation of Family Doctors or WONCA Executive Council and its current Honorary Treasurer. He follows the giant footprints left by another HKU alumnus Dr Peter LEE Chung-yin (李仲賢) of the medic class of 1952 and an honorary Doctor of Laws of 1977, who was former President. Beyond the medical realm, our honorand’s service extends to the welfare sector as Chair of the Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council, as well as to the political sphere as Chairman of the Bauhinia Foundation Research Center.
May the present honour add a small part to the esteem accrued to the Li family. This son of the family has most certainly lived out the Lis' teaching for the first four generations. Doctor Li’s success at the pinnacle of his profession, and far beyond, also fulfils in spades the nominal motto of the next four generations: 光宗耀祖 or “to the glory of our forebears”.
After all, he has quite a family history just in his direct branch of the Li clan to live up to. He is the son of Doctor Henry LI Fook-kuen (李福權), an alumnus of the HKU Class of 1946 who despite his interrupted studies at the National Shanghai Medical College due to the outbreak of the Second War, went on to lead a long and illustrious career. Our honorand also counts one of Hong Kong's first obstetrician-gynaecologists as his forebear. Doctor Arthur WOO Wai-tak (胡惠德), who qualified at London's Middlesex Hospital, trained at Johns Hopkins, was First Assistant to the Professor of his discipline at the nascent Peking Union Medical College, and later became personal physician to Republic of China President LI Yuanhong (黎元洪), was his maternal grandfather. (Quite how a female reproductive specialist could have been useful to a military man remains a mystery to this Dean of Medicine!) Doctor Woo then settled back in Hong Kong and was Lecturer and Internal Examiner at HKU, while operating the Babington Hospital next to the University. Both Doctors Woo and Li senior had been Director of St John Ambulance Association during their time.
By happy happenstance and with admiration, Mr Pro Chancellor, it remains my huge honour to present to you, a distinguished member of the Li family – your family – and of the HKU family writ large, Donald LI Kwok Tung for the Honorary University Fellowship.
