ENG-2015 — Page 175

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Health

low-income families and chronic disease patients. The body also runs family medicine specialist clinics as a key component of its primary care services. In 2015, some 1.57 million people used these services, with 6.28 million attendances recorded. On average, about 31 million outpatient visits are made to private Western medicine clinics each year.

The government has established 18 public Chinese medicine clinics to promote the development of 'evidence-based' Chinese medicine and provide training placements for graduates of local Chinese medicine bachelor's degree programmes under a tripartite collaboration model involving the Hospital Authority, non-governmental organisations and local universities. In 2015, these clinics served about 160,000 patients involving more than 1.1 million attendances. Private Chinese medicine clinics recorded about 7.5 million attendances each year.

Family Health

The Department of Health provides 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. The centres offer an Integrated Child Health and Development Programme for parents and caregivers to promote the holistic health and well-being of children. The programme's core components are parenting, immunisation, and health and developmental surveillance.

For women, these centres offer antenatal, postnatal, family planning and cervical screening services, as well as health education on areas including psycho-social health, personal relationships, physical health and healthy lifestyles. Some 29,600 expectant mothers and 57,300 newborn children attended the centres in 2015, representing about 49 per cent and 93 per cent of the total numbers of expectant mothers and newborn children respectively.

The Family Health Service under the department disseminates information on child care, parenting and health. The Family Planning Association of Hong Kong offers services and health information on sexual and reproductive health treatments and counselling. In 2015, more than 200,000 people used its services.

Student Health

Health screening and individual counselling are available to primary and secondary school students through the department's 12 student health service centres and three special assessment centres. In the 2014-15 school year, about 636,000 students joined these programmes. In addition, school health inspectors check schools' hygiene standards, while the department's Centre for Health Protection sends School Immunisation Teams to primary schools every year to administer free vaccinations for students.

Under the School Dental Care Service, the department's eight school dental clinics provided preventive dental services, including annual check-ups and basic care, to about 316,000 primary students (about 96 per cent of all Hong Kong primary students) in the 2014-15 school year. Students with intellectual and/or physical disabilities (such as cerebral palsy) studying in special schools can use these services until the age of 18.

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