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Health

Primary Care Services

Primary care is the first step in the healthcare process and covers a wide range of public health services, including health promotion and disease prevention, general outpatient services and special health services for people in specific age groups who do not require immediate hospital care. The FHB published the 'Primary Care in Hong Kong: Strategy Document'in 2010, and has been taking forward some major recommendations including formulating reference frameworks for specific chronic diseases and population groups, development of the Primary Care Directory and establishment of community health centres.

Clinic Services

Primary care services in Hong Kong are mainly provided by the private sector. Public general outpatient clinic services under the HA are primarily targeted at serving the elderly, low-income families and chronic disease patients. The HA operates 73 general outpatient clinics throughout the territory with some providing family medicine specialist outpatient services. In 2013, some 1.48 million people used these services, with 6.05 million attendances recorded. On average, about 31 million outpatient visits are made to private Western medicine clinics in Hong Kong each year.

To promote the development of 'evidence-based' Chinese medicine practice and to increase training opportunities for local Chinese medicine degree programme graduates, the HA has since 2003 collaborated with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local universities to set up 17 public Chinese medicine clinics under a tripartite model. In 2013, the government provided a total subvention of $90 million for these clinics, serving about 167,000 patients involving 980,000 visits. About seven million visits are made to Chinese medicine practitioners' clinics in the private sector (including about 40 Chinese medicine clinics operated by local universities and NGOs on a self-financing basis) each year.

Family Health

The DH provides a range of health promotion and disease prevention services through its 32 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 services are provided for women. These centres also provide health education, including psycho-social health, personal relationships, and physical health and healthy lifestyle for women. Some 28,000 expectant mothers and 54,700 newborn children attended maternal and child health centres in 2013 respectively, representing about 49 per cent and 95 per cent of the total numbers of expectant mothers and newborn children in Hong Kong.

The Family Health Service under the DH also provides information on child care, parenting and health to the general public through various channels such as information leaflets, seminars/ workshops, websites and a 24-hour information hotline. The Family Planning Association (FPA)

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