Press Releases

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has invested considerably on the improvement of elderly services over the past three years, the Chief Executive, Mr Tung Chee Hwa, said.

Addressing the launching ceremony of the three-year publicity campaign for the Promotion of Healthy Ageing today (September 29), Mr Tung noted that the Government's efforts had borne fruits, in particular in the areas of elderly housing, residential care services and home care and community support services.

On elderly housing, he said progress had been made by the Housing Authority to reduce the waiting time for public rental flats for the single elderly from four years in 1997 to three years at present on average. The Government aims to further reduce the waiting time for the single elderly to two years.

As regards residential care services, the number of subsidised residential care places for the elderly has increased from 15,400 to 21,800 over the past three years, thereby reducing the waiting time from 29 months to 21 months on average.

"We will continue our efforts to further reduce the waiting time, improve the service quality of private residential care homes for the elderly and encourage the home operators to apply for license. Mr Tung said. " Of the 500 private residential care homes, the number of licensed homes have increased from 14 in 1997 to about 450 today.

Mr Tung also noted that the allocation for the home care service had increased from $230 million in 1996/97 to $380 million in the current financial year, representing an increase of 65 per cent. Furthermore, he said the Government had committed an additional $64 million this year to further improve the home care and community care services for the frail elderly.

He paid tribute to the Elderly Commission for providing the Government its invaluable advice on services for the elderly.

Some 2,000 people from 200 Government departments and organizations took part in today's ceremony to pledge support to promote the wellbeing of the elderly. The publicity campaign, organized by the Ad Hoc Committee on Healthy Ageing under the Elderly Commission, is one of the major initiatives by the Elderly Commission to take forward the objective of promoting healthy ageing. It focuses on the promotion of physical and psychosocial wellbeing with specific themes on healthy lifestyle practices including good nutrition, regular exercise and abstinence from smoking for the first year.

Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee, Dr Raymond Wu, said at the launching ceremony that in the face of a rapidly ageing population, healthy ageing was a concern for the community.

He said, "The ultimate objective for promoting healthy ageing is to increase healthy active life expectancy rather than simply lengthening life expectancy. Healthy ageing would enable the attainment of optimal health and wellbeing to enhance one's quality of life."

Also officiating at today's ceremony were Chairman of the Elderly Commission, Mr Tam Yiu-chung; Secretary for Health and Welfare, Dr E K Yeoh; Chairman of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Mr Eric Li; Director of Housing, Mr Tony Miller; Director of Health, Dr Margaret Chan; Director of Home Affairs, Ms Shelley Lee; Director of Social Welfare, Mrs Carrie Lam; Director of Broadcasting, Mr Chu Pui-hing; Acting Director of Leisure and Cultural Services, Mr Isaac Chow; and Acting Chief Executive of the Hospital Authority, Dr Ko Wing-man.

End/Friday, September 29, 2000

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