Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is a transcript of the remarks made by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at a stand-up media session at Tin Shui Wai Park today (July 31):

Reporter: (inaudible)

Dr Yeoh: The purpose of my visit to Tin Shui Wai today is because I want to learn first hand in term of how the mosquito eradication programme is proceeding. As you know, Tin Shui Wai is one of the two places in Hong Kong where the ovitrap index is shown very high index of mosquito breeding. So it is one of the risk areas. As you know, after the dengue fever outbreak last year, we have stepped up our surveillance for mosquitoes and we are doing the ovitrap indices in different areas and different districts on a monthly basis. We used to do them every three months and used to be a territory wide index. But now we want to look at a specific area so this is pinned down that now we have 38 specific areas where we look at the local ovitrap index. And Tin Shui Wai is one of the two places in Hong Kong in these areas where the ovitrap index has been very high. Overall, it has been very encouraging that our ovitrap indices are much lower than in previous years. There are specific areas where the ovitrap indices are high. So, overall the programme is effective but in isolated areas, there are particular problems.

So, I have come here today to really see what is being done, what can be done, what are the issues in broad. Of course, it is very interesting to see the involvement of the community. Because as most of the infectious diseases, we need the involvement of the community to control the problem. Hong Kong's environment is such that it is very easy for any infectious disease once it gets a foothold in Hong Kong to spread very quickly simply because of the number of people. Our environment facilitates the spread of infections very quickly as we have seen from SARS. Once we have an introduction of a patient in Hong Kong, it spreads very quickly and very rapidly. So, the environmental and personal hygiene factors are very important in the prevention of not just dengue fever and SARS but of all infectious diseases. The commuity's participation and knowledge are very important. We need to give the community much more information relating to their role in combating infectious diseases. So, we will strengthen our health education programme. When I was in the estate, one of the residents, a lady was very active in the participation in anti-mosquito work and she was telling me that she acknowledged that sometimes within the household, there is water under old style refrigerator, they can be places where mosquitoes can breed. So, this simple information and knowledge would help reduce the risk of dengue fever and mosquito breeding. So, you see, the role of individuals is very important because the mosquitoes do not breed just in parks, country parks and gardens, they breed in the homes as well. And this particularly so for albopictus, which is a vector for dengue fever.

In the last two months, we have been looking at the things we need to prepare ourselves better for any possible outbreaks of SARS in the future. As you know, the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council has already voted $400 million dollars for us to do the short term improvements in our isolation facilities. And this $400 million will be used to improve isolation rooms in nine of the public hospitals with particular treatment of SARS patients. In these nine hospitals, there will be approximately 1,280 beds in one, two and four bed room isolation rooms. Once we have these 1,280 odd beds, we will be in a much better position to isolate patients suspected or who have SARS so that we have much better infection control procedures. In parallel, we also look in terms of how we can strengthen our disease surveillance system. I have continued to meet my task force to look at how we can strengthen surveillance system now so that we can pick up cases of SARS if they do come back at the very early stage. So, these are the things we are doing.

We are also communicating and liaising with many disease control centres globally including the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in America. In fact, next week, when I go to America for a meeting, I will be meeting with the Director of Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Gerberding, to explore with her on further measures of collaboration. The CDC America is also going to send some people to Hong Kong in a few weeks to discuss with us to strengthen the training programme for our public health personnel. And of course, with Dr Margaret Chan in Geneva, we also have very strong links in Geneva with World Health Organisation so that we can look forward to better support and to also explore with them complementary training programmes. Lots of things are currently happening and we are doing everything possible to make sure that we are on top of the situation to SARS recurrence.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

End/Thursday, July 31, 2003
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