ENG-2009 — Page 508

428 History

hold, while maintaining its position as the authority on health and related regulatory matters.

In the wake of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, the Government took a series of measures to strengthen its public healthcare infrastructure, one of which was the establishment of the Centre for Health Protection (CHP) under the DH in June 2004, to strengthen the surveillance system for detecting outbreaks of infectious diseases and to respond swiftly to them. The CHP works closely with the local community, the Mainland authorities, the World Health Organisation and others around the world to combat infectious diseases.

Due to ever increasing demand and reliance on subsidised public healthcare, the Government conducted various reviews and issued a number of healthcare reform consultation documents since the 1990s which included documents entitled 'Towards Better Health' (the Rainbow Document) in 1993, 'Improving Hong Kong's Health Care System: Why and For Whom?' (the Harvard Report) in 1999, 'Lifelong Investment in Health' in 2000-01 and 'Building a Healthy Tomorrow' in 2005.

Building on these consultations, the Government put forward in 2008 the consultation document entitled 'Your Health, Your Life' after consulting the public on a package of healthcare reform proposals which included enhancing primary care, promoting public-private partnership in healthcare, developing electronic health record sharing, strengthening the public healthcare safety net; and introducing supplementary healthcare financing.

A comprehensive system of labour legislation has been developed to provide for employees' benefits and protection, employees' compensation, occupational safety and health. Free employment services are provided to help job-seekers find work and employers to recruit staff. The Employees Retraining Board provides quality training and retraining courses and services to eligible people, in particular those who are unemployed to enhance their employability and meet the needs of employers and the Hong Kong economy.