Secretary for Health visits district health centre and express (with photos)
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The Secretary for Health, Professor Lo Chung-mau, visited Kwai Tsing District Health Centre (DHC) at Kowloon Commerce Centre in Kwai Chung and Yau Tsim Mong DHC Express at Pioneer Centre in Prince Edward this afternoon (April 4) so as to get a better grasp of the operations of the DHC and DHC Express and how the centres are working to tie in with the way forward set out in the Primary Healthcare Blueprint.
Accompanied by the Commissioner for Primary Healthcare, Dr Pang Fei-chau, Professor Lo and the Under Secretary for Health, Dr Libby Lee, toured the two centres and received briefings by centre staff on primary healthcare services offered to citizens, including health promotion activities, health risk factors assessment, community rehabilitation support, and referral arrangement for members-in-need to receive follow-up services from district network healthcare professionals. Representatives of the operators of Kwai Tsing DHC and Yau Tsim Mong DHC Express, namely Vice-chairman of Kwai Tsing Safe Community and Healthy City Association Mr Ho Siu-ping, and the Chairman of the Lok Sin Tong Benevolent Society, Kowloon, Mr Lee Shing-kan, were present to introduce their respective centres.
Professor Lo pointed out that the Government positioned the DHCs and DHC Expresses as community resource hubs as stated in the Primary Healthcare Blueprint released last year. The DHCs and DHC Expresses are responsible for co-ordinating various healthcare professions and primary healthcare services in the district, promoting the concept of “family doctor for all” in collaboration with the private medical sector, as well as encouraging members of the public to establish a long-term doctor-patient relationship with their family doctor through a cross-professional public-private partnership model and targeted subsidies under the Chronic Disease Co-Care Pilot (CDCC) Scheme, such that the public can enjoy coherent and comprehensive healthcare services.
Anticipating the launch of the CDCC Scheme later this year, Kwai Tsing DHC has started to promote the concept of “family doctor for all” actively in the district, with a view to getting prepared for matching citizens with suitable family doctors in the coming future. The DHC delivers services based on the concept of lifelong preventive care, i.e. through various activities to help people understand that they should always manage their own health regardless of the stages of life they are going through, such as building a healthy lifestyle, receiving appropriate vaccinations at different ages, undergoing screening for chronic diseases, so that disease prevention can be conducted in the manner of early detection and intervention.
Moreover, as a district health resources centre, Yau Tsim Mong DHC Express has plenty of experience in collaborating with community clinics and pharmacies to provide more comprehensive and continuous care for citizens. The experience will serve as valuable reference for other DHCs and DHC Expresses in carrying out related work in future.
Dr Pang supplemented that as a key component of the community primary healthcare system, the DHCs and DHC Expresses will strengthen their role as a co-ordinator with focuses on district-based, family-centric services. That would include enhancing co-ordination of community healthcare services, supporting primary healthcare doctors in the mode of case manager, providing district healthcare services, establishing network among public and private healthcare services, and providing health preventive and social services.
Professor Lo said that the Government is committed to putting more resources in fostering primary healthcare in a bid to improve citizens’ health. He appealed to citizens to make good use of the services offered by the DHCs and jointly build a “Healthy Hong Kong”.