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HEALTH
Let me now turn to the health side.
Health Centres for the Elderly
Several Members expressed concern about the utilisation of elderly health centres. We are conscious of the low utilization rate of this service, this is partly because of the newness of the concept of preventive care amongst the elderly. Nevertheless, recent enrolment figures show an increasing interest in the service. To boost this further, we have drawn up special publicity programmes to promote these centres. Moreover, elderly health centres and District Boards also jointly arrange health promotion activities which raise the centres' profile in the district.
Primary Health Care
In the area of primary health care, our focus is on health promotion and education. Some Members have raised concern as to whether we have sufficient allocation for this purpose. I wish to stress that the provision allocated under the "Health Promotion" programme area does not on its own reflect all the Government expenditure on health promotion and education. Health promotion and education is an integral part of the activities under the "Disease Prevention" programme as well. The increase in the provision of these two programme areas is 11.5% as compared to 1995- 96. Spending in these areas represents about 33% of the total amount allocated to the Department of Health. Furthermore, the services under curative and rehabilitative programmes also contain a strong element of health promotion. In addition, we set up the Health Care & Promotion Fund in May 1995 with $80 million in May 1995 for the purpose of stepping up efforts on health promotion and disease prevention.
In the past few years, we have made new initiatives to enhance health promotion and disease prevention, such as the setting up of a District Health System, Woman Health Centres and Elderly Health Centres on a trial basis. Some Members have urged us to increase the number of these centres. Indeed, in 1996-97, we plan to extend the District Health System to two more districts in Kowloon and open one more Woman Health Centre, as well as three more Elderly Health Centres. As these are new initiatives, we shall be monitoring closely the delivery of these services and how best to extend these services to the remainder of the territory.
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