OVERVIEW OF THE PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN HONG KONG

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Introduction

Hong Kong average life expectancy is one the longest city among the world, even longer than some developed countries such as America, Japan (Lee et al., 2016). According to the statistic provided by the Department of Health in 2016, the life expectancy of Hong Kong male and female are 81.2 and 87.3 respectively. The reason why Hong Kong is having this honor can be related to various factors. Generally speaking, more and more people have started to take care of their health. For example, they have a variety of food choice, buying food from many places with a relatively reasonable price. The Hong Kong government also pays lots of effort in health promotion, like encouraging people to do enough exercise per week and eat healthily with less oil, salt, sugar etc. Citizens are able to find this kind of health information easily through television, advertisements, or the Internet. In terms of policy making, Hong Kong government has set up regulations restricting smoking in Hong Kong. Smoking in restricted area is prohibited, higher regulation in tobacco trading, as well as the advertisements of tobacco, posted or showed to the public. Together with the smoking cessation program provided by the government, the number of people smoke is kept decreasing throughout these years (Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health, 2016).

Nonetheless, another important factor that makes Hong Kong people can have the longest life expectancy in the world is due to Hong Kong has a comprehensive health care delivery system. Including both public and private health services, from out-patient clinic, specialist out-patient clinic, even in hospitalization, Hong Kong health care system has a high quality and high standard of health delivery service. With the advanced medical technology, all the Hong Kong citizens can enjoy the health service, no matter what kind of economic status of oneself. They can use the health service. Everyone will be provided with adequate health care services provided by all health criteria. As a result, Hong Kong citizens can have a higher chance to have a longer life expectancy.

In the following paragraph, a brief overview of the current Hong Kong health care system will be discussed, followed by the discussion of one of the major roles of the whole system in Hong Kong, Primary Health Care, by looking at the working principles of the system and the services provided to the public. Last but not least, the health care system in Hong Kong though is comparatively perfect than other countries. There are some rooms of improvement, which will be discussed in the recommendation part.

Hong Kong current Health Care System

Nowadays the health care system in Hong Kong is running under a dual-track system, they are public and private sectors. These sectors deliver different services from primary, secondary and even tertiary care. Public health care sector is the c