Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region – 4
Following are the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Professor Lo Chung-mau, and the Under Secretary for Health, Dr Cecilia Fan, at a media session after attending a radio programme this morning (July 19):
Reporter: Professor Lo, the Chronic Disease Co-Care Pilot Scheme was rolled out two years ago. Could you maybe give us the latest figures on the number of participating patients and doctors respectively? And what do you make of the figures so far? And could you also maybe give us an update on the number of staff members in public hospitals, and how effective the Government as well as the HA’s plan in recruiting doctors trained outside Hong Kong, as well as retaining local talents?
Secretary for Health: Our original plan for this chronic disease co-care programme is to recruit 200 000 citizens who do not have any history of hypertension or diabetes for screening. I think right now we are exceeding the target. The programme has started for about 20 months, but we have already recruited 140 000 people with 80 000 having completed all the screening, and 32 000 were actually found to have high blood sugar or hypertension. So the positive rate on this screening programme is almost 40 per cent. This is really a little bit alarming for us, because this is pretty high, especially considering the fact that after preliminary analysis, we found that the male participation rate is quite low comparing to the female participation rate. So we are actually anticipating that men may have more of these hypertension or hyperlipidaemia or diabetes. So we are trying to encourage the men to come out to join this programme more. We have different measures. And if we have more male people coming out to join this screening programme, we may expect even higher positive rate in this.
Looking at the whole programme, I think it is really encouraging that we have this response. We have right now 640 doctors joining and they have close to 900 service points for our participants to get the service. Of course, there are rooms for improvement. We will be conducting interim analysis for this and we will be making measures and considering reviewing the current programme with the intent to improve it, to encourage more doctors participating as well as our people participating. But right now I think this is very encouraging. We are also asking the university to make a study about the cost effectiveness of this programme, and we are anticipating that, and in fact the preliminary data actually indicated that this kind of programme screening chronic diseases before complications will actually be able to save a lot for our future healthcare system.
Reporter: And the number of staff members?
Secretary for Health: For manpower, I think we are making good progress by various measures, multi-prone measures, including retention of our own talent by different measures, hoping that we have a reduction in the wastage rate. We have also been recruiting non-locally trained doctors, nurses, and we have very positive response. For doctors, for example, we have over 230 doctors coming for permanent job, and we have more than 70 coming for short-term exchange. So over 300 non-locally trained doctors have joined the Hospital Authority, and there are others joining the universities as well. So these are very encouraging. We are also increasing our own training capacity by putting more resources into our two medical schools, and also considering the proposal for a third medical school in Hong Kong. So all these measures will help to improve not just the manpower for service in Hong Kong but hopefully we will be able to have more talents to take up all the tasks that we have put forth especially in developing Hong Kong into an international medical and health innovation hub.
Reporter: Dr Fan, how would your experience particularly in the family medicine field as well as your experience in the Department of Health help with your new post as the Under Secretary for Health?
Under Secretary for Health: When I took up this post in the Health Bureau, I think I would try to contribute to all health policies in all aspects. But having said that, because my previous experience is more focused on family medicine and public health, so I think I definitely can contribute more to the primary healthcare policies, like just now we have mentioned, the District Health Centres, chronic disease co-care programmes, as well as the life-course approach for the citizens. So I think actually all aspects will contribute to the whole healthcare enhancement.