Press Releases

Transcript of Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food

Following is the transcript of a media session by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, at the Central Government Offices this (October 3) afternoon:

Reporter: Dr Yeoh, as there are more cases coming out, do you see there is a sign showing that we're moving to...?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: No, I think it certainly demonstrates that the dengue fever is endemic now. We are surrounded by countries and places where dengue fever is endemic, and has been endemic for many years in South-East Asia, in the Western Pacific region. Hong Kong is one of the few places that never had a local dengue case. This is the first time that we have reported cases and we expect that there will be sporadic cases. So I think we do expect that we will continue to see sporadic local cases in the future but if we are able to do our mosquito control programmes effectively, then the chances of having the epidemic will be low. We cannot exclude the possibility because anything can happen. But the Department has done a lot of work in terms of doing the mosquito control programmes. In the last three years, there has been an intensive programme going on. This year the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department started the anti-mosquito campaign quite early on and intensified it when they saw that the mosquitoes were breeding very quickly. When the Department first intensified the programme, they went to all construction sites. We are now going to other public areas, unused land, hospitals and schools. In the public areas, we have intensified our efforts in doing the mosquito control programmes but we also need the cooperation of the public because these infected mosquitoes can breed in very small areas of stagnant water. Even pots at home or any containers that accumulate water and left stagnant are potential areas for the mosquitoes to grow. So, the public must also cooperate with us to deal with the mosquito breeding areas in their own homes and their own environment because we used to assume that it is in the public areas, all these construction sites are open areas, but even saucers that collect water from flower pots are potential areas that the mosquitoes can breed.

Reporter: Do you think there will be more local contracted cases coming out?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: I think we do expect that there will be sporadic cases because we have already seen that dengue has entered into the local mosquito population. Our strategy is to control it, to make sure that we don't have more cases and it does not reach epidemic proportion.

Reporter: Do you think that with all those mosquito extermination work underway, the threat of dengue fever will gradually be undermined or reduced?

Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food: Certainly, there are two strengths of the prevention programmes. One of course is to prevent mosquito breeding and second is for the public to take precautions to guard themselves from mosquito bites.

Reporter: Thank you very much.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion)

Thursday, October 3, 2002