ENG-2018 — Page 202

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Health

Vaccination

Children are protected against communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, hepatitis B, poliomyelitis, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox and pneumococcal disease under the Hong Kong Childhood Immunisation Programme.

Under the programme, the government will, starting from the 2019-20 school year, introduce free vaccination against the human papillomavirus to school girls of particular age groups as a public health strategy for the prevention of cervical cancer.

The government provides free and subsidised seasonal influenza vaccinations to people aged 50 or above, children and other eligible groups under the Government Vaccination Programme and the Vaccination Subsidy Scheme. The programme provides eligible people with free vaccination each year at public hospitals and clinics, residential care homes for the elderly and for persons with disabilities, and designated institutions serving people with intellectual disabilities. Private doctors enrolled in the scheme can receive a subsidy of $210 for each vaccination they give to eligible groups.

Both initiatives also provide free and subsidised 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (23vPPV) to eligible people aged 65 or above, and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) to eligible high-risk elderly. The subsidies paid to private doctors for 23vPPV and PCV13 are $250 and $730 per dose respectively.

In October, the government launched the School Outreach Vaccination Pilot Programme and enhanced the Vaccination Subsidy Scheme. Through a mix of government and public-private partnership delivery modes, free outreach influenza vaccination activities were conducted at more than 570 primary schools, kindergartens and child care centres. As at end-2018, more than 270,000 children aged from six months to below 12 had received vaccination, consisting of more than 40 per cent of the age group.

Non-communicable Diseases

The major killers in Hong Kong are cancer, heart and cerebrovascular diseases, which together accounted for about 51 per cent of all registered deaths in 2017. Elderly people are the major victims of these chronic non-communicable diseases.

The Cancer Coordinating Committee, chaired by the Secretary for Food and Health, steers and recommends strategies and work for the prevention and control of cancer, which claimed more than 14,400 lives locally in 2018. The Department of Health's Cervical Screening Programme encourages women aged between 25 and 64 who have ever had sex to undergo regular cervical cancer screening. In 2018, some 102,000 registered women were screened.

In August, the department regularised the Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme to subsidise asymptomatic Hong Kong residents aged between 50 and 75 to undergo screening for the prevention of colorectal cancer. By end-2018, around 117,600 participants had joined the

programme.

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