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432 History

medical services to uphold the Government's policy of ensuring that no one is denied medical care due to lack of means. At the same time, the Department of Health (DH) maintains and promotes good health and prevents diseases from taking 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 papers on healthcare reform for public consultation during the period between 1993 and 2005. Included for consultation were papers entitled 'Towards Better

papers 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 those initiatives, the Government put forward an additional document in 2008 entitled 'Your Health, Your Life', for a first round of discussion and consulted the public as well on a package of healthcare reform initiatives that included proposals for enhancing primary care, promoting public-private partnership in health care, developing an electronic health record sharing system, strengthening the public healthcare safety net; and introducing supplementary healthcare financing.

Based on the views advanced in that first round of discussion, the Government published in 2010 a document for a second round of discussion on healthcare reform proposals that included establishing a government-regulated, voluntary Health Protection Scheme to enhance the long-term sustainability of the healthcare system.

A comprehensive system of labour legislation has been developed to provide for employees' benefits, protection and compensation, as well as for their occupational safety and health. Free employment services are offered to help both job-seekers and employers. The Employees Retraining Board provides quality training and retraining courses and services to those who are eligible, in particular to the unemployed and workers who are likely to be displaced by economic restructuring to enhance their employability and enable them to meet the demands of the changing labour market.

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