Primary healthcare enhanced

October 18, 2019

Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan:
We have promised within this term of Government to build in all of the 18 districts, either district health centres or what we called district health centre express (DHC Express). I think we will be able to meet this particular timeline. The whole idea of strengthening primary healthcare is really to act as a gatekeeper for people who are not sick and people who are high risk, or people who are already sick but do not require hospital care. So I think this is very important for us to really shift some of the care for people in a community, instead of everybody rushing to the hospital. I think this is one of the major issues. Secondly, I think we have already appointed, through tender, the Chinese University of Hong Kong to evaluate the effectiveness of the district health centres so that we are aware that these centres can actually help, first of all improve the health status of people in Hong Kong and secondly to minimise or alleviate the pressure of our public hospital system in Hong Kong. Because in the district health centres, we are actually not only increasing the awareness of people on health, we are also helping those who are already discharged from hospitals on their rehabilitation as well as the chronic disease management within the centres, so they don’t always need to go back to the hospitals for those services.

(To watch the video with sign language interpretation, click here.)

District health centres can help alleviate the pressure on public hospitals, Secretary for Food & Health Prof Sophia Chan said today.

Prof Chan made the statement during a press conference with Secretary for Labour & Welfare Dr Law Chi-kwong to elaborate on initiatives in the Chief Executive's 2019 Policy Address.

She said: "We have promised within this term of Government to build in all of the 18 districts, either district health centres or what we called district health centre express (DHC Express). I think we will be able to meet this particular timeline.

"The whole idea of strengthening primary healthcare is really to act as a gatekeeper for people who are not sick and people who are high risk, or people who are already sick but do not require hospital care."

Prof Chan added that instead of everybody rushing to the city’s hospitals, it was important to shift some of the community care to places like health centres.

"We have already appointed, through tender, the Chinese University of Hong Kong to evaluate the effectiveness of the district health centres so that we are aware that these centres can actually help, first of all improve the health status of people in Hong Kong and secondly to minimise or alleviate the pressure of our public hospital system in Hong Kong.

"Because in the district health centres, we are actually not only increasing the awareness of people on health, we are also helping those who are already discharged from hospitals on their rehabilitation as well as the chronic disease management within the centres, so they do not always need to go back to the hospitals for those services."