Press Releases

The Government plans to spend $30.8 billion on health services and $29.8 billion on welfare services in 2000-01 to meet the targets in these policy areas. These represent an increase of 2.8 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively over the figures in the current financial year.

Announcing this today (March 10), Secretary for Health and Welfare, Dr E K Yeoh, said that of the expenditure on welfare services, $2.7 billion would be spent on various services for the elderly, an increase of $258 million over 1999-2000.

Out of the $2.7 billion, $1.8 billion will be earmarked for residential care services for the elderly. "We will provide an extra 2,510 residential care places, including 500 beds in existing care homes and 1,450 places under the 'enhanced bought place scheme'," Dr Yeoh said.

"To enable elderly residents to stay in a familiar environment even when their health conditions deteriorate, we will pilot a new funding formula to finance subvented residential care homes according to the levels of frailty and care needs of the elderly residents," he added.

Another $840 million will be used to provide community support services for the elderly. The additional facilities to be provided include five day care centres, three multi-service centres, four social centres, and three support teams for the elderly.

Dr Yeoh said, "We are conducting a review on the existing community care and support services for the elderly and their family carers. The objective is to identify ways to upgrade the existing services and improve the interface among various types of home-based, community and residential care services for the elderly to enable more frail elderly people to continue to live at home. The study will be completed in July 2000."

To better target the residential care services to the elderly with genuine need, the Government will put in place an enhanced gate-keeping mechanism by this summer to assess the care needs of the elderly. The Social Welfare Department is setting up five regional core teams as part of the monitoring system to ensure consistent and effective functioning of the mechanism.

Turning to the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme, Dr Yeoh noted that the Government was encouraged by the results of the package of measures introduced in June 1999 to assist able-bodied CSSA recipients to become self-reliant and independent.

The 16 per cent drop in CSSA unemployment caseload since June 1999 clearly demonstrates that many employable recipients do not wish to rely on CSSA indefinitely, he said, adding that with assistance, they can become self-reliant.

To provide more assistance to able-bodied CSSA recipients to help them overcome barriers to work, Dr Yeoh said the Government had earmarked about $200 million in 2000-01 for implementing the Self-reliance Strategy which includes the following initiatives -

* extend the Active Employment Assistance (AEA) program to cover all CSSA unemployment cases and low earning cases where the recipients are working part-time;

* encourage single parents and the low earning CSSA cases who are already working full-time to join a voluntary employment assistance program which aims at helping them to find work or move on to better-paid jobs;

* the Social Welfare Department will work closely with the Labour Department, Employees Retraining Board and non-government organizations to implement tailor-made programs to encourage single parents and unemployed CSSA recipients to rejoin the work force;

* remove the requirements on the minimum income and hours of work under the CSSA Disregarded Earnings arrangement, subject to review after two years;

* extend the opening hours in 100 subvented child care centres and provide subsidies for 6,000 after-school care places for children between the age of six and 12 to help address the problem of children left unattended at home, and to enable parents to join the work force or attend re-training programs;

* provide additional assistance to new arrivals both before and after their entry into Hong Kong to help them integrate into the community quickly;

* provide additional support and counselling services for single parents and victims of domestic violence to help them handle their emotional problems, reduce their long-term dependence on welfare services and encourage self-reliance. In particular, a one-stop shop will be available for victims of domestic violence; and

* provide additional home/community care services for the elderly to enable more frail elderly people to continue to live at home and to enable their able-bodied family carers to go out to work.

Dr Yeoh also outlined a range of other direct welfare services to be provided in 2000-01. These include $1.4 billion to be spent on youth services, including the provision of one school social worker in each secondary school by phases; $1.7 billion on family and child welfare services; and $2.2 billion on direct welfare services for people with disabilities.

"We remain fully committed to ensuring that people with disabilities are provided with necessary care and support to facilitate their integration and full participation in the community," Dr Yeoh stated.

In this respect, the Government aims to provide an extra 660 residential places for the ex-mentally ill, mentally handicapped and physically disabled; 680 day care places; 60 pre-school places for children with disabilities; four additional medical social workers; and four additional clinical psychologists.

�@

Turning to the health side, Dr Yeoh said that of the $30.8 billion, $28 billion would be allocated to the Hospital Authority, representing an increase of 2.2 per cent over the $27.4 billion this year.

"In 2000-01, we propose to open 460 new beds (34 psychiatric, 68 infirmary, 354 acute general and four Intensive Care Unit beds), distributed among Tseung Kwan O Hospital, Kowloon Hospital and Tai Po Hospital. By the end of 2000-01, the total number of beds in the public sector would rise to around 29,000," Dr Yeoh said.

The Government also plans to start, in 2000-01, the redevelopment and expansion of Pok Oi Hospital and the relocation of the Tang Shiu Kin Hospital Accident and Emergency Department to the Ruttonjee Hospital, which will help improve and rationalize service provision.

On primary health care, the Department of Health will further strengthen its work on preventive care, disease prevention and health promotion, developing long term strategies and intersectoral cooperation in the coming year. The focus will include a series of anti-smoking activities and healthy aging.

"We will also work with the Elderly Commission (EC) and concerned government bureaux and departments to promote healthy aging among the elderly population as well as the soon-to-be old. An ad hoc committee under EC would be set up to map out strategies and initiatives," Dr Yeoh noted.

Another focus of the Department of Health in the coming year will be the promotion of Chinese medicine. The registration of Chinese medicine practitioners will commence shortly within the next few months. Regulation of the Chinese medicine will also commence by phases later in the year.

Concluding, Dr Yeoh stressed that while the Government would still manage to continue investment in the healthcare infrastructure, we should not be complacent.

He said, "Health cost will escalate over the years and unless we plan early, we would soon have a problem in sustaining our healthcare system. We have to look for ways to control cost increases and to identify supplementary funding so that we can continue to provide an accessible, affordable and quality health services for the public.

"Health is a personal responsibility and everyone of us should have early planning for our healthcare needs. We in the Government will make every effort to assist the individuals in this respect.

"The Harvard Report released last year has generated substantial debate on this subject of health care reforms. We will soon publish a Government document, setting out our proposals on service re-organization, quality assurance and funding options," Dr Yeoh added.

End/Friday, March 10, 2000

NNNN