Assessing Health-system Capacity for Crisis Management

While discussing possible work for my duration of my internship in PHE, I was provided with the suggestion of proposing a plan for assessing Hong Kong’s Health-system Capacity for Crisis Management. This is of utmost importance to evaluate what is currently in place in order to improve the system.

Climate change might also bring about new hazards previously not common for Hong Kong, such as the intense cold surge a few weeks earlier, where some citizens might not have acted rationally in the cold, perhaps due to such rare drop in temperature and lack of public education, thus endangering their own lives and those of the rescue teams.

Although the Hong Kong emergency system is faring well under current circumstances, we must be ready to fight against unknown and unpredicted risks. Perhaps we can learn from other countries what they do better than us and adapt new preventive measures into a Hong Kong context? It is also vital to educate the public on how to react to such adverse weather events in prevention of accidents in the future.