Health 169
To promote the development of 'evidence-based' Chinese medicine practice and to increase training opportunities for local Chinese medicine degree programme graduates, 16 Chinese medicine outpatient clinics have been set up through tripartite collaboration among the HA, NGOs and local universities. During the year, a Government subvention of $86 million was provided for running these clinics. A total of 134 981 patients made 806 385 visits to the 16 clinics, and 68 new graduates were recruited into the clinics. About 29 million outpatient visits are made. to Western medicine clinics and seven million to Chinese medicine practitioners' clinics in the private sector each year. The majority of people are able to afford the services provided by these clinics.
Family Health
The DH provides a range of health promotion and disease prevention services through its 31 maternal and child health centres and three women's health centres for children up to five years of age, and women aged 64 or below. These centres offer an Integrated Child Health and Development Programme for parents and caregivers to promote the holistic health and well-being of children. The core components of the integrated programme are parenting and immunisation, as well as health and developmental surveillance. Antenatal, postnatal, family planning, and cervical screening are provided for women.
The centres also provide health education including psycho-social health and personal relationships, as well as physical health and healthy lifestyle for women. Some 29 000 expectant mothers and 72 000 newborn children attended maternal and child health centres in 2011, respectively representing about 31 per cent and 74 per cent of the total numbers of expectant mothers and newborn children in Hong Kong.
The Family Health Service also provides information on child care, parenting and health to the general public through various channels such as information leaflets, VCDs, websites, a 24-hour information hotline and electronic parent-child magazines.
The Family Planning Association (FPA) of Hong Kong offers services and health information on sexual and reproductive health treatments and counselling at its clinics, youth healthcare centres, women's clubs, and libraries. The FPA received government subsidies amounting to $39.22 million in the 2010-11 financial year. Over 200 000 people used these services in 2010.
Student Health
The DH provides health checks and individual counselling to primary and secondary school students at its 12 student health service centres and three special assessment centres. A total of 690 729 primary one to secondary seven students joined the services in the 2010-11 school year.
In addition, school health inspectors pay visits to schools to check on their hygiene standards, while health officers and nurses provide advice on preventing communicable diseases. School Immunisation Teams under the auspices of the