Let's Focus More On 'preventive Health Care' In 2023

The founder of an NGO advocating primary health care through collaboration between medical professionals and social organisations, urged the public to make a healthy lifestyle a priority when coming up with New Year resolutions.

Ning Fan, founder of Health in Action, wants the community to focus more on preventive and primary care.

This would focus on "lifestyles related to our working environment, and to our living environment like access to green space, good air quality, our access to an affordable healthy diet, have time to do exercise, stress relief and we could achieve good sleep quality, not to mention our social life, our connection with neighbourhood and community and our active participation to public health campaign like vaccination, chronic illness and cancer screening program", Ning said in Hashtag Hong Kong.

He said people used go to doctors when they were ill, but the ageing population and the increase of chronic diseases, meant there were not enough health professionals.

"The present healthcare system with 70 percent of resources put in hospital-based settings will not be sustainable," he said.

He said the government had kicked off the process by setting up District Health Centers (DHC) in 18 districts and had just released the Primary Healthcare Blueprint.

He called for "leadership to facilitate collaboration across different bureaus and departments.

"For instance, the Labour and Welfare Bureau could make one stope to provide incentives for enterprises to set up policies in workplaces for staff to do relaxing stretches and exercises during their regular work routine," he said.

"The authority also has a leading role in encouraging management in different sectors to facilitate the engagement and participation of employees in primary care."