ENG-2012 — Page 181

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Health

Primary Healthcare and Medical Services

Primary health care is the first step in the healthcare process and covers a wide range of public health services, including health promotion and disease prevention, as well as general outpatient services and special health services provided for people in specific age groups who do not require hospital care.

The FHB formed a Working Group on Primary Care (WGPC) under the HMDAC and published the 'Primary Care in Hong Kong: Strategy Document' in 2010.

In 2012, the first purpose-built Community Health Centre was opened, a sub-directory of Chinese medicine practitioners under the Primary Care Directory was launched, and the core documents of the reference frameworks for preventive care for older adults and children in primary care settings were published. The HA has launched various programmes including the chronic disease management programme, the Risk Assessment and Management Programme with diabetes mellitus and hypertension patients as major target groups, and a Patient Empowerment Programme with the aim of improving chronic disease patients' knowledge of the diseases and enhancing their self-management skills.

Clinic Services

Primary care services are mainly provided by the private sector. Public general outpatient clinic services are offered primarily to low-income families, chronic disease patients and other vulnerable groups. The HA operates 74 general outpatient clinics in Hong Kong with some providing family medicine specialist outpatient services. In 2012, some 1.43 million people used these services, with 5.89 million attendances recorded.

To promote the development of 'evidence-based' Chinese medicine practice and to increase training opportunities for local Chinese medicine degree programme graduates, the HA, NGOs and local universities have collaborated to set up 17 Chinese medicine outpatient clinics. In 2012, the Government provided a $90 million subvention to run these clinics, to which 154,885 patients made 916,308 visits. 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.

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 children's holistic health and well-being. The programme's core components are parenting, immunisation, and 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, personal relationships, and physical health and healthy lifestyle for women. Some 31,000 expectant mothers and 73,400 newborn children attended maternal and child health centres in 2012 respectively,

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