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LCQ12: Interpretation services and public health education work provided by public health authorities
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     Following is a question by the Hon Alice Mak and a written reply by the Secretary for Food and Health, Dr Ko Wing-man, in the Legislative Council today (March 1):

Question:

     Recently, some concern groups on the rights and interests of the ethnic minorities (EMs) have relayed to me that EMs who do not understand Chinese and English encounter many difficulties when using public healthcare services due to the language barrier.  Also, the Government's public health education efforts for health promotion and disease prevention can hardly reach EMs.  In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(1) whether it knows the number of EMs serviced by each hospital cluster in the past five years;

(2) whether it knows the numbers of times for which (i) diagnoses and treatments and (ii)  interpretation services of each type (including telephone and on-site interpretation) were provided for EM patients by each hospital cluster in each of the past five years; the respective average waiting time for such services; and

(3) of the details of the authorities' public health education efforts targeted at EMs (including publishing leaflets and holding talks in the languages of EMs) in the past five years; whether they will step up such efforts; if so, of the details; if not, the reasons for that?

Reply:

President,

     My reply to the various parts of the question raised by the Hon Alice Mak on the interpretation services and public health education work provided by public health authorities for ethnic minorities is as follows:

(1) and (2) The Hospital Authority (HA) provides services for all members of the public regardless of their race and ethnic origin.  To cater for the needs of ethnic minorities, interpretation services are arranged for those who are in need of such services in public hospitals and clinics of the HA through a service contractor, part-time court interpreters and consulate offices.  The interpretation services provided by the service contractor cover 18 languages, including Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Nepali, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Bengali, Japanese, Tagalog, German, French, Sinhala, Spanish, Arabic, Malay and Portuguese.  The HA does not maintain statistics on the number of ethnic minorities seeking medical consultation in the HA.

     Statistics on on-site and telephone interpretation services provided by the HA in its public hospitals and clinics in the past five years are set out in the table below:
 
Year On-site interpretation
(number of cases)
Telephone interpretation
(number of cases)
Total
(number of cases)
2012/13 4 893 83 4 976
2013/14 5 946 71 6 017
2014/15 7 844 107 7 951
2015/16 10 271 178 10 449
2016/17
(April to November 2016)
8 035 171 8 206

     For scheduled service (such as medical appointment at general and specialist out-patient clinics), patients may request the hospital or clinic concerned to arrange interpretation services in advance.  In such cases, interpreters were able to arrive on time.

     For non-scheduled service, such as hospital admission during emergency, hospital staff will make immediate arrangements where necessary or at the request of patients, so that telephone interpretation service or on-site interpretation service can be delivered as soon as possible.  The staff may also use response cue cards, which are available in 18 languages, to communicate with the patients to ensure timely provision of medical treatment.

     Over the past five years, the HA provided emergency interpretation service for 2 309 times.  On average, an interpreter was able to arrive within an hour to provide interpretation for the ethnic minority service users.  For urgently arranged telephone interpretation service, the waiting time ranged from about a few minutes to less than half an hour and the average waiting time was 23 minutes.

(3) The HA launched a dedicated website for ethnic minorities in mid-2015, providing the essential information given on the current HA website in five languages, including Hindi, Nepali, Punjabi (Indian), Punjabi (Pakistani) and Urdu.  The website contains information about the HA and the accident and emergency service, as well as the addresses, telephone numbers and consultation hours of general out-patient clinics.  Revamp of the website was completed in February 2017 to make the content available in three more languages, namely Thai, Bahasa Indonesia and Tagalog, so that more ethnic groups can better understand the information provided by the HA.
 
     In addition, to cater for the needs of ethnic minorities in Hong Kong, the HA's Smart Patient Website (SPW) has set up a disease information webpage which provides information about cancer, chronic diseases and other diseases in eight languages, namely Thai, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Nepali, Punjabi (Indian), Punjabi (Pakistani), Hindi and Urdu.  The HA will continue to enhance the SPW to improve the disease management and self-care abilities of ethnic minorities.

     In respect of health education, the Department of Health (DH) has translated a variety of key information on health, e.g. cough etiquette, proper steps of hand washing, personal and environmental hygiene, individual infectious diseases, etc. into different languages, including Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, Thai, Bahasa Indonesia and Filipino.  The translated information has been used to prepare health education materials, including pamphlets, posters and booklets, which have been uploaded onto the website of the Centre for Health Protection of the DH.  The DH has also distributed the health education materials to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and religious groups serving ethnic minorities, and disseminated health information through newspapers and newsletters targeting ethnic minority readership.

     Regarding the promotion of prevention of infectious diseases, the DH will, based on risk assessment findings and scientific evidence, carry out targeted publicity measures to promote awareness.  Taking the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome as an example, the DH has, during the time when the Muslims make pilgrimages to the Middle East, stepped up health education and publicity among Hong Kong pilgrimage tour groups, religious groups and tourists by providing them with the information and suggestions on precautionary measures.  Moreover, the DH will inform the relevant NGOs and religious groups of the latest information on individual infectious diseases, e.g. avian influenza, via email.
 
Ends/Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Issued at HKT 16:45
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