*************************************
Following is a transcript (English portion) of a media session by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr York Chow, after his meeting with members of the Board of Scientific Advisers of the Centre for Health Protection of the Department of Health today (November 16):
Dr Chow: Today is the meeting with the Board of Scientific Advisers of the Centre for Health Protection. I met with all the experts and listened to their views regarding the risks of a pandemic in the region. Essentially, knowing that there were chicken infections and some sporadic human infections in our vicinity, we know that the risk of having avian flu infecting human cannot be avoided. But the possibility of it becoming a pandemic for the world is still considered of a low risk. We are monitoring the situation very closely and we also need to ensure ourselves that we are well prepared in case it affects Hong Kong. There are a number of considerations that we need to strengthen.
One of them is that our chickens are well vaccinated and they are considered safe at this moment. With any genetic changes of the H5N1 virus, we might have to reconsider whether the segregation of chicken and human policy that we have proposed should be enhanced and also putting into a faster programme.
And secondly, we also know that although our hospitals and our staff are well prepared for any infectious disease, we want to ensure that not only hospitals but also those working outside the hospitals, and those in private practice, are well aware of this possibility and the policy and the procedure to deal with any emerging diseases. So, the Centre for Health Protection together with the Hospital Authority will be liaising with the private sector and also organizing seminars to ensure that all the health care workers in Hong Kong are well aware of how to handle emerging diseases.
The third problem is regarding some of the requests that we received from different sectors ¡V the industry, the commercial sectors, particularly some of the global companies and some of the foreign residents in Hong Kong. We feel that this is also important that we should have sufficient information given to them. The Centre for Health Protection will organise a series of communication forums for all these companies so that they know the risk regarding pandemic and how they should prepare for it in case it affects the world, particularly this part of the world. So with this, I would like to invite some of the members of the group to say a few words regarding our preparedness plan because we spent over an hour and a half looking at some of the policies we have. We are ready to receive any new information from them or suggestions from them. And a lot of the policies that we have introduced are the results of their expertise.
Reporter: Can you tell us what is the situation on the Mainland and what sort of information you¡¦ve got?
Dr Chow: Currently we have very good information from the Mainland both from the Ministry of Agriculture on the outbreak of avian flu in poultry as well as from any human infection from the Ministry of Health. So, both of them have real time information for us. We have point-to-point contact. A lot of our staffs are communicating with them on a daily basis. So, regarding some of the outbreaks, we know it almost as early as the Ministry knows about it. (How about the human cases?) Which one are you talking about? Hunan? As far as I know, the boy has antibody in his body but they have to send the specimens back to the central laboratory in Beijing for verification. As far as the investigation is concerned, one of our experts is actually in China right now working with the World Health Organisation (WHO) team and looking at the technical side of the investigation. So in every aspect, I think we know quite well what the information is like, what the situation is like in Mainland China. But we know that Mainland China is a big country and a lot of outbreaks are in the rural areas, so it takes time before the reports and all the investigations are being done.
Reporter: ¡K central slaughtering¡K?
Dr Chow: Because we feel there is an added risk if we continue with live chicken in the markets so we might have to speed up the programme of central slaughtering or regional slaughtering. We haven¡¦t had any firm decision yet. I think we have to look into this as the priority.
Reporter: ¡K (inaudible).
Dr Chow: We have now a senior consultant, a virologist, actually working in China together with WHO. They will be working together with the laboratory in Beijing, the Central Reference Laboratory. So I think the WHO actually has sufficient expertise in the Mainland in order to address this problem.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Issued at HKT 23:00
NNNN
