Health 169
Contingency Planning for Infectious Disease Outbreaks
The Centre for Health Protection continually reviews and updates its strategies for coping with major outbreaks of infectious diseases, ensuring both the government and the community are prepared to deal with them. A plan for mobilising volunteers in the event of an outbreak is also in place and the centre organises drills every year to test Hong Kong's preparedness.
For the 2009 East Asian Games, the Centre developed a prevention and control contingency plan to guide responsive action should there be an outbreak of infectious disease during the Games. It also took part in drills arranged by the organiser, 2009 East Asian Games (Hong Kong) Limited, to test various parties' overall preparedness and response to public health incidents during the Games.
Human Swine Influenza and Communicable Diseases
The total number of statutory notifiable infectious diseases in Hong Kong is 47. During the year, about 48 200 cases were reported, of which about 5 300 and 34 200 were diagnosed as tuberculosis and human swine influenza respectively.
In April 2009, confirmed cases of human swine influenza were reported in Mexico and the United States and continued to emerge in other parts of the world. On May 1, 2009, Hong Kong confirmed its first imported case of the disease. During the containment phase at the early stage of the outbreak, the Government strengthened its control efforts on all fronts. The strategy focused on:
enhancing surveillance and controlling the disease at the border control points and in the community;
• stepping up responses in hospitals and clinics and enhancing their capacity;
mobilising the community to step up disease prevention efforts;
• maintaining transparency of information and fostering collaboration with WHO, Mainland and overseas health authorities; and
ensuring adequacy of legal powers in disease control.
The Centre for Health Protection also launched comprehensive responsive actions, activating various co-ordination and response centres. These included an emergency response, outbreak intelligence and emergency hotline centres to deal with information and enquires on the outbreak, and assist an emergency response committee in combating the disease.
As the human swine influenza virus circulated widely in the local community and around the globe, the Government moved from the containment phase into the mitigation phase of its strategy. The aim was to focus surveillance on severely ill patients and outbreaks involving schools and institutions and to relieve the disease burden on the community and public health services. Other major measures included vaccination programmes, antiviral stockpiling, provision of a sustainable medical service, promotion of basic measures such as personal and environmental hygiene, enhanced epidemic surveillance, and risk communication.