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Health

A board of scientific advisers and six scientific committees meet periodically to help the centre formulate policies to improve the health protection system.

The centre maintains close liaison with district councils and solicits their support to disseminate health information and guidelines, alert the public to health threats, facilitate rapid implementation of preventive measures, and carry out other health promotion activities. It also shares professional knowledge and experience in combating diseases with health authorities in the Mainland, Macao and WHO.

Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases

The Prevention and Control of Disease Ordinance specifies 50 statutory notifiable infectious diseases in Hong Kong. During the year, 15,280 cases were reported, of which 6,898 and 4,051 were diagnosed as chickenpox and tuberculosis respectively.

The centre continually reviews and updates its strategies for coping with major outbreaks of infectious diseases, including an influenza pandemic, the Ebola virus disease, measles, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Zika virus infection and dengue fever, ensuring both the government and the community are prepared to deal with them.

Vaccination

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

Starting from the second term of the 2019-20 school year, the government will, under the programme, provide free vaccination against the human papillomavirus to school girls of suitable grades as a public health strategy in preventing cervical cancer.

The government provides free and subsidised seasonal influenza vaccinations (SIVS) to eligible people, including those aged 50 or above and children, under the Government Vaccination Programme and the Vaccination Subsidy Scheme. The programme provides free vaccinations at public hospitals and clinics, residential care homes for the elderly and for persons with disabilities, residential child care centres, and designated institutions serving people with intellectual disabilities. The scheme grants participating private doctors 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 people. The subsidies paid to private doctors for 23vPPV and PCV13 are $250 and $730 per dose respectively.

In October, the government regularised the SIV School Outreach (Free of Charge) programme to cover more primary schools and to extend a pilot run to kindergartens, kindergartens-cum- child care centres and child care centres. As nasal influenza vaccine has not been widely used in Hong Kong in the past, the department is conducting a trial that provides the vaccine in selected schools, to test the feasibility and logistical arrangements of applying this vaccine in

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