I
Introduction
The Medical and Health Department provides a whole range of medical and health services for the community of Hong Kong. The constant influx of immigrants into Hong Kong, the rising expectations of its people, coupled with the constraints in manpower and resources, have imposed heavy strains on services provided by the department. Attendances at the casualty departments of major Government hospitals, at various general and specialist out-patient clinics, and admissions to hospital wards, are the highest so far recorded. However, the development of medical and health services has shown no signs of slowing down but has in fact made satisfactory progress in keeping pace with the needs of the growing population.
For the 1982/83 financial year, the Medical and Health Department's expenditure was $1,580.9 million. Subventions totalling about $793.0 million are also being made to many non-government medical institutions and organisations. The capital expenditure on hospitals and other buildings including furniture and equipment was $320.3 million.
II Health of the Community
The general level of health of the population in Hong Kong remains good. This is due largely to anti-epidemic and disease surveillance measures, developments in preventive and personal health services and general improvement in the socio-economic conditions of the population. This progress is reflected by further improvement in the already good health indices and the decline in the incidence of major communicable diseases.
It was
The estimated mid-year population of Hong Kong in 1982 was $5.23 million, an increase of 1.5% compared with the previous year. further estimated that about 24.3% of the population were under 15 while 6.9% were 65 and over.
The crude death rate was 4.9 per thousand population. Figure 2 shows the age specific death rates in Hong Kong for the year 1982. The five leading causes of death in Hong Kong were malignant neoplasms, heart diseases, cerebral vascular diseases, pneumonia and various injuries/ poisoning. Common forms of malignancy in Hong Kong were cancers of the
lung, liver, nasopharynx, stomach and intestine.
The total number of registered live births in the year was 86,036,
a crude birth rate of 16.4 per thousand population compared to 16.9 in 1981. In the same year the infant mortality rate was 9.9 per thousand live births against 9.7 in 1981. The major causes of infant deaths recorded were anoxia, hypoxia and birth asphyxia (32%), congenital abnormalities (28%), immaturity (7%) and pneumonia (6%). Maternity mortality rate was 0.01 per thousand total births as compared with 0.08 in 1981.
1