HEALTH
hospital places remained at 639. Castle Peak Hospital, one of Hong Kong's two main psychiatric hospitals, is being redeveloped.
Community work and after-care units of psychiatric hospitals help discharged patients. The community psychiatric nursing service and domiciliary occupational therapy service, in particular, aim to provide continual care, treatment and rehabilitation programmes for discharged mental patients in their home settings. This helps patients' social readjustment while educating them and their families on mental health. Five community psychiatric teams and nine psychogeriatric teams have been set up to provide designated care and rehabilitation programmes to psychiatric and psychogeriatric patients. Other complementary rehabilitative services run by government departments and non-governmental organisations include day-centres, halfway houses, long-stay care homes, vocational training, selective placement and social clubs.
Severely mentally handicapped persons requiring intensive nursing care and rehabilitation services are cared for at Tuen Mun Hospital (200 beds), Caritas Medical Centre (300 beds) and Siu Lam Hospital (300 beds). One outreach team has been established to provide services for early intervention.
Community Based Nursing Service
The Hospital Authority's Community Based Nursing Service provides post-discharge rehabilitative nursing care and treatment for the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill through a network of 31 community nursing service centres and 13 community psychiatric nursing service offices. During the year, 52 231 patients were served and 667 785 home visits were made.
Port Health
The Port Health Office enforces measures in the Quarantine and Prevention of Disease Ordinance and the International Health Regulations to prevent the introduction of quarantinable disease into Hong Kong by air, land or sea. No cases of plague or yellow fever were reported during the year.
In July, the Port Health Office launched a Travellers' Health Service, as pledged in the Chief Executive's 1999 Policy Address, to offer preventive service for people planning to travel outside Hong Kong and advice on travel-related health risks. It provides a 'one-stop' service that includes consultation for travel health risks assessment and advice on various risk-reduction measures, and is offered to the public on a full cost recovery basis. A new bilingual travel health web site has also been created to disseminate timely information on various travel health topics.
Medical Charges
Fees in public hospitals and clinics are heavily subsidised. Patients in general wards of public hospitals are charged $68 a day. This is an all inclusive fee, covering treatment, medicine, surgery, tests, accommodation and food. Some private beds are provided at major hospitals with higher maintenance and treatment charges.
A consultation at a general out-patient clinic is charged at $37, while a specialist consultation is charged at $44 per session. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy and child assessment services are also charged at $44 per session. Attendance at geriatric
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