A healthy new year?
If those entrusted to make the big decisions for Hong Kong can put aside their fears and choose to be assertive next year, 2006 could go down as a turning point for health, not just in Hong Kong, but all of China.
This has been a year of warnings. First it was air pollution, then multiple food scares that turned 'malachite green', 'Sudan Red' and other industrial terms into household words. Overstretched maternity services added to the list. They all sent one common message: in health terms, Hong Kong is not an island. The preservation of our health demands genuine partnership with our neighbours.
Informed cynics may quite rightly point out that none of these problems is new. Air pollution has been with us for at least the past decade. Our food has always been suspect, causing cholera outbreaks and worse. We simply know a lot more about what we're eating now.
And anyone familiar with the outpatient queues and the rows of stretchers in our public health service of a decade ago would laugh at those talking of an overstretched system now.
So why, then, has 2006 been such an important warning year?
It is because we have reached a stage in our development where we ask more questions and expect more answers. Not only that, but our expectations are higher than ever before.
Health is considered a right in most developed societies, not a privilege enjoyed by the wealthy. More importantly, the trend in much of the developed world is for individuals to take responsibility for their own health.
Hong Kong is no exception. It is filled with highly educated people committed to maintaining their own health and that of their now few and precious offspring. Questions about the quality of our air, our food and the safety of our roads - the many large structural issues once entrusted to our conservative bureaucrats - are being asked daily, by people who want more action and fewer words.
Take the food safety issue. This year seems to have been one long food scare. We started off by banning mainland chickens for fear of the H5N1 bird flu virus, and fleeing the corpses of small birds found on the streets. While the panic spread by a few dead birds seemed disproportionate, no virus jumped from birds to humans here. The lessons learned during the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak seem to have paid off.
But H5N1 was only the beginning of many threats. In the second half of this year, it seemed to be one thing after another. All mainland eggs became suspect after it was learned that a potential carcinogen, Sudan Red dye, was being added to poultry feed to make egg yolks more attractive. Then bean curd was found to contain formaldehyde and boric acid. Most recently, freshwater fish from Guangdong were found to contain malachite green.
The fish issue highlighted something we learned while watching our skies darken and air thicken whenever the wind blew the minute particles, nitrous oxides and sulfur dioxides belched out by our neighbours' industrial efforts: they don't care; they think Hong Kong's in a 'take it or leave it' situation. Guangdong fish farmers, angry about our demands for toxin-free fish, stopped exporting - to show us that we need them more than they needed us.
But there is growing concern on the mainland, as well, about polluted food, air and water. What they lack are voices and expert support - something we have plenty of. If better links developed between groups on both sides of the border, that would help create more means of effecting change.
Beijing selected Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun, a Hong Kong health bureaucrat, as its candidate to secure the top job at the World Health Organisation. This shows its recognition that Hong Kong has a lot to contribute to national health. In other words, if we have the will, we can indeed change things and make 2007 a truly happy and healthy new year.
Margaret Cheng is a Hong Kong-based medical writer
