Press Releases
SFH on influenza
Following is the transcript of remarks (English portion) made by the
Secretary for Food and Health, Dr York Chow, at a stand-up media session
after attending the 60th session of the Regional Committee of the Western
Pacific Region of the World Health Organisation today (September 25):
Secretary for Food and Health: The 60th session of the Regional Committee of
the Western Pacific Region of the World Health Organisation just concluded
this morning. In the past five days, they have passed numerous resolutions
and discussed a wide variety of issues relating to public health and health
services. It gives us very good guidance for what we are going to do in
future, particularly issues relating to the current human swine flu
pandemic, the impact of the financial crisis, the health care system and the
health care financing principles for the future. It has been a very
successful week for us. As far as the feedback from various delegates are
concerned, so far, it has been all positive. We are very proud that we are
able to organise this committee meeting with success, although we still need
to do some evaluation later on.
Reporter: (about an H3 virus case)
Secretary for Food and Health: First of all, I think every time any person
dies from flu, particularly a young person, is a very sad and traumatic
matter. I do believe that every one of us is having the same risk when it
comes to flu. More importantly, I would like to take this opportunity to
appeal to the public that they should not take flu as a very mild disease
although for many of us, it will be a mild one, but occasionally they could
have complications. For this particular case, I do not have the details
regarding whether he has other complications or illnesses or whether there
is super infection as well. But every year, we have a few hundred to a
thousand people dying from seasonal flu, most of them are the elderly, but I
think occasionally it will also affect young children as well.
Reporter: (about human swine flu vaccine)
Secretary for Food and Health: First of all, I would like to reassure the
public that we are still getting the vaccine and we are confident that we
will be able to get the human swine flu vaccine. But we are also giving the
elderly the vaccination of seasonal flu vaccine and pneumococcal vaccine
this winter. In other words, we are having three vaccination programmes this
year. We should be able to get the vaccine for human swine flu before the
end of the year. The vaccination programme should be able to start before
the so-called winter peak rise. The second thing, regarding primary care, we
have already decided after the health care reform consultation last year,
the primary care is one of the areas we need to focus on. And certainly I
think we should be moving to more initiatives for primary care in the coming
year. On health care financing, I have mentioned time and again that we are
not shying away from this issue. But we need to find a right time to discuss
and decide together with the public.
Reporter: Where are we going to get the vaccine?
Secretary for Food and Health: The tendering process is still undergoing, so
it is not up to me to disclose the recommendations at this point of time. It
will be decided by the Government Logistics Department and the Department of
Health.
Reporter: (about vaccine)
Secretary for Food and Health: The young children are getting their
pneumococcal vaccine right now. They should finish most of the required
vaccination by the end of November at the latest. For the elderly, we should
be able to vaccinate them with pneumococcal vaccine more or less together
with the seasonal flu vaccine. For the human swine flu vaccine, we will
vaccinate them when the vaccine arrives. We predict that it will be round
about the end of the year.
Reporter: (HIV)
Secretary for Food and Health: We still do not have the detailed analysis of
the new vaccine, but I have to stress that HIV transmission is mainly
through sexual transmission in Hong Kong. The majority of them come from
man-to-man type of sexual transmission, so it is something that still could
be preventable in terms of behaviour modification and protection during
sexual intercourse. I would like to appeal to the public, particularly to
those at risk: adopt the right behaviour and protection so that they could
minimise HIV. We cannot rely on HIV vaccination at the moment because we
still do not have the sufficient evidence that it works. The second thing is
we also cannot totally eradicate HIV because the drugs that are being used
right now is only to contain and control it but not to eradicate it. The
experience of many countries that have it is that the main difficulty for
some parts of the world is the shortage of ICU beds and intensive care
facilities. We are very lucky in Hong Kong that such facilities are
available, but always there is a finite capacity. Our strategy is to ensure
that we can retain certain control of the epidemic so that there will not be
any sudden upsurge of requirement for such cases. And so far, we have been
able to control it in that manner. According to the statistics in the last
two months, we have roughly about 10 to 15 patients who are in so-called
serious or critical state of human swine flu in the hospitals every day.
They are scattered among different hospitals, so each hospital probably will
not need to handle anything more than three or four patients at a time.
Reporter: (about the second wave of human swine flu)
Secretary for Food and Health: It is very difficult to say at the moment.
But we do see that the peak is still oscillating. They are not coming down.
Normally, in normal summer, we should have seen the flu season gone by now
in late September and early October. So we probably will be following what
some of the Northern Hemisphere countries are experiencing, that is, the
second wave will still be coming, but we don't know whether this is already
the second wave or there will be even a harsher second wave, but we have to
prepare for the worst. That is the reason why we want to make sure we have
the vaccine before our winter. According to the microbiologists, the virus
should be more virulent during winter because of the temperature and because
of human beings and so on.
(Please also refer to the
Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Friday, September 25, 2009
Issued at HKT 16:13
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