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Community cooperation will be crucial in ensuring the success of Hong Kong's preparedness against an influenza pandemic, the Permanent Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Mrs Carrie Yau, said today (November 16).
Speaking after an interdepartmental action coordinating committee (IACC) meeting on avian influenza, Mrs Yau, also the chairperson of the committee, said the Government would hold a Community Cleanliness Day this Sunday (November 20) as part of its ongoing programme to raise public awareness of the importance of keeping their environment clean and observing good personal hygiene.
"The Government alone could not build a strong defence against infectious diseases. We need each and every individual to contribute his/her part in making our overall plan effective and sustainable," she said.
Adopting the theme, "Raise hygiene awareness, guard against influenza", activities will be held on the Community Cleanliness Day to mark the opening of a series of events on environmental hygiene in all 18 districts, which will run through the cooler months until January/February next year. Activities will include cleaning operations, inspection of rear lanes, roving exhibitions, bus parades, health talks and distribution of publicity materials.
On the same day, the Housing Department will hold an Estate Cleanliness Day with Fu Cheong Estate in Sham Shui Po and Tin Yuet Estate in Tin Shui Wai as the focal estates for the event. This event will be supported by other estates in the territory.
To set the scene, Mrs Yau said publicity about personal hygiene and maintaining a healthy lifestyle had been recently stepped up with the broadcasting of two new television and radio APIs (Announcements in Public Interest).
A number of leaflets with different themes and in different languages had also been produced and widely distributed to ensure a proper understanding of the differences between seasonal flu, avian flu and flu pandemic, as well as from giving health tips to guard against the diseases, she added.
"Although there is no outbreak of bird flu in our local poultry, we should not let our guard down, particularly at a time when more bird flu outbreaks are being reported on the Mainland and in the region.
"We will continue to stay vigilant and fine tune our strategy, having regard to the latest developments in the region," Mrs Yau said.
She also said an interdepartmental communication exercise code-named POPLAR would be staged on November 24.
Unlike Exercise MAPLE conducted last year and the recent Exercise FLAMINGO organised by the Hospital Authority, which involved ground movements, the coming exercise will focus on testing internal communications and coordination among bureaus and departments during an emergency situation.
"Good communication and coordination are key to swift and effective disease prevention and control efforts. While individual departments and bureaus are doing regular drills to test their preparedness, some involving ground movements, it is of utmost importance to ensure that communication among departments and bureaus is smooth and actions are well-interfaced," Mrs Yau said.
"As we have put to the test twice the ground movements, we need to test our communication system and identify gaps that may cause coordination problems in our responses in a major public health situation.
"Exercise POPLAR is therefore basically an internal exercise aimed at testing the notification and communication systems within the Government according to the Framework of Government's Preparedness Plan for Influenza Pandemic. There will be no ground movement, but the Chief Executive and principal officials will take part in the exercise," she said.
Ends/Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Issued at HKT 18:13
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