Hong Kong health chief during Sars epidemic believes city’s emergency plan can be improved
- Now director of Chinese University’s school of public health, Yeoh Eng-kiong is advocating for an overall framework that can be adjusted to different crises
- Data already at government’s fingertips can be mined to identify trouble areas, including the city’s longstanding dearth of hospital beds
A former health minister who learned the difficulty of dealing with public health crises the hard way during the 2003 Sars epidemic wants to put that experience to use by helping the government review its infectious disease response plan, the Post has learned.
Yeoh Eng-kiong, now director of Chinese University’s school of public health, said the administration needs a more timely and comprehensive plan to cope with unexpected outbreaks.
Yeoh knows what it is like to face that kind of criticism.
Among the criticisms levelled at him were unsatisfactory public communication and a failure to supervise former health director Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun and the Hospital Authority, which had no contingency plan for large-scale outbreaks.
Despite his resignation, former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa said at the time that Yeoh was a “dedicated, courageous professional”.
Earlier this month, Yeoh submitted a proposal for a study into how the city’s health system could detect outbreaks earlier and enhance its response in tackling them.
“We would need an overall plan for early monitoring and early detection,” he told the Post in a recent interview. “When you have early detection for unusual events, you can then see what you need to do.”
The administration did launch a response plan for “novel infectious disease of public health significance” on January 4, after Wuhan health authorities revealed to the public dozens of cases of pneumonia attributed to the novel coronavirus.
The plan listed what actions would be taken by different government departments under a three-tier response system. For example, under the “emergency level”, which was activated on January 25, a committee to coordinate responses was formed and chaired by the city’s chief executive.
Similar plans have previously been put into place for emerging infectious diseases, including influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome, Zika and Ebola. But in each case, the plans were only drafted after the diseases had emerged.
Yeoh said that approach needs improvement, as the government might not be quick enough to come up with a response in an emergency situation, adding the World Health Organisation had also advocated for the advance creation of overall preparation plans.
An overall framework is necessary, he said, so that operational details can then quickly be adjusted with the outbreak of different diseases.
The plan would also be applicable to situations like nuclear events or food contamination, when large numbers of people could be expected to fall sick, he added.
Yeoh said another possible area for study is how the city can better use the trove of data already available to it in the health care system.
The data can be used to evaluate the health care system’s capacity, which needs to be strengthened to prepare for a sudden surge of patients in emergency conditions.
“Even without this [coronavirus outbreak], our medical beds occupancy rate was already over 100 per cent. This is not ideal,” he said.
But Yeoh said past studies showed that among patients who were considered semi-urgent and non-urgent at emergency departments, about half would not require hospitalisation if the government could gather community support for stronger primary health care services.
“We need to move people to the community,” he said, adding it would not only ease hospital congestion but also the workload of health care staff.
Asked about the government’s performance in handling the new coronavirus spread, Yeoh held off on giving a judgment: “[Making a judgment] would not help the epidemic. It’s better to see how we can help and how we can get it under control.”
