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Following is the opening remarks by the Under Secretary for Food and Health, Professor Gabriel Leung, at the press conference announcing details of human swine influenza vaccination programme this afternoon (November 30):
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I just like to very briefly recap the key points of what I just said in Chinese. This exercise of human swine flu vaccination is a very large-scale programme designed to protect the health of Hong Kong people, especially the five key target groups and these include first, 830,000 people who are 65 and over, and 710,000 people who comprise groups including those who live in residential facilities for the elderly, chronic disease patients under 65 as well as pregnant women. The third group comprises 380,000 children aged six months to just below six years. The fourth group are 150,000 healthcare workers and finally, about 1,500 people who work in the live pig trade.
As I said, this programme is designed to protect health as we prepare to enter the winter peak season or the second wave of this pandemic. We will be deploying a large number of colleagues to implement this programme, including 300 additional new staff in the Department of Health (DH) and the Hospital Authority (HA). The programme will take place across a total of some 220 HA and DH hospitals and clinics, including 100 clinics and 41 hospitals of HA and 82 clinics and centres operated by the department. The operation hours will remain the same as they are currently, but we will keep very closely in view of actual demand and make appropriate adjustments accordingly.
In parallel, we also look forward to working closely with private sector colleagues who will help in vaccinating many of their own high-risk patients, with subsidies from the Government amounting to $129 provided through this programme. We anticipate a large number of private doctors will participate and details about their clinic locations, extra charges if any, etc will be posted online for public reference.
Finally, I would like to make a very strong appeal to everybody who belongs to the five high-risk groups. The Scientific Committee operating under the auspices of the Centre for Health Protection has very carefully weighed the pros and cons of human swine influenza vaccination, including the possible adverse effects of the vaccine but also the potential hazards posed by infection by the human swine flu virus and subsequent morbidity or complications facing these five high-risk groups. And their conclusion is the benefits far outweigh the potential risk. So I would really sincerely appeal to those who are in the five high-risk categories, their caregivers as well as their parents of these individuals to get vaccinated soon when we roll out this programme in the public sector on December 21 and the private sector on December 28.
Ends/Monday, November 30, 2009
Issued at HKT 20:09
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