Micron Associates: Spain still has best healthcare in Europe, claims report

SPAIN’s healthcare system is the best in Europe, claims a new study.

And the country is ranked fifth best in the world, in the study by Bloomberg which measured efficiency, life expectancy and cost.

The report comes after a number of studies showed that Spanish health care has deteriorated dramatically over recent years due to national budget cuts.

British medical journal ‘The Lancet’ recently slammed its quality following drastic 30% cuts over the last few years.

Despite this, Spain’s efficiency rating was 68.3, its life expectancy was 82.3, and the cost of healthcare as a percentage of GDP per capita was 10.4%.

This is compared to the UK’s efficiency rating of 55.7, life expectancy of 80.8, and healthcare cost percentage of 9.4%.

Hong Kong topped the list of the ‘most efficient healthcare countries in the world’, followed by Singapore.

Japan and Israel also made the top five, while the UK came 14th, and the US ranked 46th.

The results were greatly affected by Bloomberg’s decision to take cost into account.

This sent countries with good but very expensive healthcare – like the US – far down the last.

Micron Associates: How to make Hong Kong schools a hub for better health

Scanning Hong Kong's schools, one feels sad to see them getting unhealthier by the year. Different sorts of student problems, whether emotional, interpersonal, or behavioural, crop up and plague schools to varying degrees.

The list is long, ranging from emotional outbursts, depression, and substance abuse to bullying, gang fights, teenage pregnancies and lack of respect for authority, plus a wide range of learning difficulties, the seriousness of which is aggravated by the rash introduction of the integrated education policy, under which special needs students are placed in mainstream schools.

On the whole, students are unhappy, lacking self-esteem and self-confidence, although still scoring high on international tests. Educators are no healthier either. Incessant reform efforts and the lingering threat of school closures over the past decade have taken their toll, as have increased workloads, physical exhaustion and depression. Regrettably, schools have become an unhealthy place to study and work in. This issue deserves serious attention - as an unhealthy school environment can only breed unhealthy students.

Health is important for both personal and societal development. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines health holistically, seeking physical, social and mental health for all citizens. To them, the school is one important setting in which holistic health should be sought for all. Building healthy schools is also one of their most important strategies in the battle for global health. They have been striving to build regional centres to promote school health and foster healthy attitudes in schoolchildren.

According to the WHO, a healthy school is supposed to be built around six core areas: health policies, health services, health training for students, school ethos, physical environments and school-community relations. Obviously, it is prevention taking precedence over treatment and a total approach to school health and improvement, but in practice, individual schools are free to choose the entry point and level of engagement.

Hong Kong, fortunately, has been making its own efforts to promote school health. The Healthy School Award Scheme (2001-2004) and the subsequent QEF Thematic Network for Healthy Schools (2011-2015), both supported by the Quality Education Fund, have managed to inculcate a new, health-promoting culture in schools. Under these projects, around 500 schools have participated in the business of health education and health promotion. Some schools participating in these enterprises even managed to win awards that will qualify them for the WHO regional registry as health promoting schools.

In fact, Hong Kong has become a regional leader regarding school health promotion, thanks to the ongoing collaboration between the government and education and health professionals. We have built a basic curriculum and training structure for school health promotion and also a sound infrastructure to audit achievements, confer awards, disseminate good practice and spread the health message.

Research results have also shown that schools joining the health-promoting movement have experienced better health, in terms of better health achievements and learning for their students, better school ethos and so on. More importantly, we have also nurtured a community of health-promoting schools which have the potential to become mentors to their peers.

Schools that have benefited from this experience can serve as standard-bearers for health promotion, spreading the message to others. Hopefully, this practice will ultimately extend to all schools and kindergartens in the city. In addition, Hong Kong can also benefit from links with other major health-promoting players both regionally and globally in terms of information and experience exchange, and can also serve as a hub to promote regional resilience in the face of growing health threats.

Micron Associates: Record sharing is key to better health care for Hongkongers

If there is a single factor that could enhance delivery of health care services in Hong Kong using existing resources, it would be a functional partnership between the public and private sectors - or between public hospital doctors and private practitioners. In fact, more than eight years ago, the Health and Medical Development Advisory Committee envisaged an expansion of community care and preventive medicine, with greater involvement of private family doctors, to relieve pressure on the overstressed public system.

Key to this is shared online access to patient health records. In 2009, Legco's Finance Committee approved the allocation of HK$1.1 billion for the development of a computerised patient record system over the next 10 years. It may seem a long time but this is a sensitive issue with no room for error such as breach of privacy if patients are to have confidence in a public-private partnership.

It is only now that the government has announced that the first phase of the system will go online by the end of the year.

To ensure safeguards for privacy, officials will send the Electronic Health Record Sharing System Bill to Legco for scrutiny by the end of the month.

A spokesman said the government believed that sharing health records would enhance public-private partnerships to the benefit of patients, including children, senior citizens and people who frequently use public and private health-care services at the same time.

An example that could happen to anyone would be attendance at a public hospital accident and emergency department outside normal hours, with a follow-up visit to a private doctor. In these circumstances access to the results of hospital tests and a public doctor's clinical notes would make common sense.

In terms of the quality and cost of health care, sharing health records is expected to reduce errors in medical treatment and prescription and avoid duplication of tests. In the long run, it is the foundation of more efficient delivery of health care.

Micron Associates: Hong Kong joins world study on health impact of air pollution

City will join other international finance centres in World Health Organisation's initiative to examine and compare approaches to pollution

Hong Kong will be one of about 10 international financial centres taking part in a clean air and health initiative to be launched by the World Health Organisation later this year.

The project will study air-quality improvement measures in the cities and examine their impact on health, said Dr Carlos Dora, head of the WHO's "intervention for healthy environments" unit.

"We will develop collaborations with global cities that are economically important," Dora told the South China Morning Post. "The project is still being discussed with the cities and with funders."

The programme, details of which will be confirmed in the next few months, will examine and compare how cities tackle air pollution and look to formulate models based on different approaches. It will also track changes in policy and their impact on air quality and public health.

Dora visited Hong Kong in October to meet government officials. He praised the Hong Kong government's clean-air policy, saying it demonstrated that the administration had clearly identified the problem.

An Environmental Protection Department spokeswoman said she understood the project would draw lessons from the experiences of different cities and the impact on pollution of policies on transport, land use, buildings, energy and port management, among other areas.

"We look forward to discussing with [the WHO] how we could contribute to it," she said.

The government has put forward a series of environmental policies in recent months, including offering subsidies for the replacement of old diesel vehicles.

It also plans to help vehicle owners replace old catalytic converters - devices which reduce harmful emissions.

But some environmentalists say the policies do not go far enough to tackle the problem.

The department has also commissioned Chinese University's school of public health to develop a methodology for quantifying the health and economic impacts of air pollution in Hong Kong.

The 15-month study was commissioned in January.

"We are hoping to help the government by offering it a more adequate cost-benefit rationale when it implements policies, to answer the question of whether the money is worth spending," said Professor Wong Tze-wai, who is part of the study.

"There is not much such data at the moment."

The University of Hong Kong developed its Hedley Environmental Index to estimate the number of deaths, medical consultations and other costs linked to air pollution.

Wong said the data gleaned from the new study would be more comprehensive and its design would make it easier to apply to policy-making.