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HONG KONG—A year and a half after its conception, Hong Kong officially opened its new Centre for Health Protection (CHP) on Wednesday (October 27).
The institute was created in the aftermath of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks to better prevent and control disease, with an initial budget of $125 million. Its opening ceremony was marked by stern words from Shigeru Omi, director of the Western Pacific office of the World Health Organization.
Omi said that avian influenza viruses, currently spreading in poultry in Thailand, are becoming more versatile and could pose an even greater threat to human health. "All countries need to intensify their effort [to stamp out bird flu]," he said, urging Hong Kong health officials to work closer with their counterparts in Thailand and Vietnam.
In 1997, Hong Kong was commended for its quick isolation of the previously unknown H5N1 avian influenza virus. As the disease spread though the city's live poultry markets, eighteen people contracted the illness and six died.
Only a few years later, Hong Kong was caught off guard by SARS. The disease killed 800 of the 1700 people it sickened in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong's government fought SARS in 2003 with far greater transparency than China—whose health and hospital officials at first tried to hide the problem. But as the outbreak faded, it became clear that even Hong Kong's disease control infrastructure needed improvement.
The upgrade came in the form of the CHP, headed by P.Y. Leung who reports directly to Hong Kong director of Health P.Y. Lam. Hong Kong's CHP was in many ways modeled on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, although it is far smaller. Former CDC Director Jeffrey Koplan was among a number of international figures advising Hong Kong's government on the center's organization.
The CHP is made up of six branches—emergency and response, surveillance and epidemiology, infection control, program management, a lab services unit, and a public health services branch that runs sexually transmitted disease, HIV, and tuberculosis clinics.
While much of the infrastructure already existed within Hong Kong's Department of Health, some elements now falling under the CHP are eligible for better funding.
The government laboratory was originally founded in 1894. For decades, the disease diagnostics lab languished as a two-person operation based out of a public hospital. By the time SARS hit Hong Kong, the lab consisted of only nine technicians.
Lim Wei-Ling, who now heads the lab, told The Scientist many health department workers were reassigned to take up similar roles at the new CHP—but her lab is one of the areas benefiting from an increase in manpower. She said the lab started hiring new staff and contract workers in late 2003—increasing its numbers to 20. By the end of this year, it might hire add another 10 contract workers.
The lab now occupies several floors in a purpose-built facility. Since SARS, the lab's diagnostic capacity has also been greatly improved with the purchase of several automated DNA extraction units, dozens of thermocyclers, and a new DNA sequencer.
The lab staff is also working on improving its own gene sequence database and software to carry out molecular epidemiology. "Publishing our findings has not been our priority in the past," Lim said after showing The Scientist possibly one of the first phylogenetic trees of Hong Kong's earliest SARS patients. One of the patients on the tree predates Hong Kong's Metropol Hotel cluster by at least a month.
Lo Wing Lok, a prominent medical doctor and former legislator who now sits on the CHP's advisory arm, said there's recognition among health professionals here that the spread of SARS could have been avoided. "For example, a medical report written by doctors in the Chinese province of Guangdong in January of 2003 [before SARS hit Hong Kong] described an atypical pneumonia of unknown etiology," he told The Scientist.
In the past, the government relied on Hong Kong academics and their links to China to flag unusual disease activity. The CHP formalizes those links with regional and national centers for disease control in China and focuses attention on many areas previously neglected—like improving training of epidemiologists.
References
| 1. | | [http://www.chp.gov.hk/]
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| | | Centre for Health Protection
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| | | R. Walgate, "First global SARS meeting," The Scientist, June 17, 2003.
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| 3. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20040903/03/]
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| | | C. Holding, "How cats catch bird flu," The Scientist, September 3, 2004.
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| 4. | | [http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20030617/01/]
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| | | R. Walgate, "China claims SARS under control," The Scientist, June 17, 2003.
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| | | Hong Kong Department of Health
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