Page 28 - 166 Varsity ebook
P. 28

26 /


        and Taiwan. Her readers exchange  “It is difficult for local healthcare   experienced. Our system and local
        their first-hand experiences and    professionals to recognize a case   health professionals can learn
        encourage one another in the        of AOSD because they lack the       from them through the collabora-
        comment sections of her page.       experience of diagnosing and        tion,” Lam says.
        They also discuss information       treating rare disease patients,”
        about the disease, such as the ef-  Lam says.                           *Name changed at interviewee’s
        fectiveness of the medications that                                     request.
        they are taking.                    According to him, the Mainland
                                            has a larger database of patient in-           Edited by Lesley Lam
        In the 2022 Policy Address, the     formation. It is easier for doctors     Sub-edited by Victoria Fong
        government announced that a da-     there to find similar rare disease
        tabase for individual uncommon      cases, resulting in a higher effi-
        disorders would be established. A   ciency of diagnoses.
        cross-border collaboration be-
        tween China’s national collabora-   “In our current public health
        tive network for rare disease and   system, a centralized database of
        the Hong Kong Genome Institute      recorded rare disease cases is not
        would also be introduced.           yet established. Patients might be
                                            referred to different specialists ac-





























                  Comments under one of Candy’s Facebook page posts.


        Dr. David Lam Tzit-yuen, the        cording to their symptoms, so it is
        Legislative Council member for      a long journey before the correct
        the Medical and Health Services     diagnosis is reached,” he adds.
        Constituencies, believes that the   “The number of rare disease
        Mainland has an advantage over      patients and the variety of rare
        Hong Kong in treating and diag-     diseases (in the Mainland) are way
        nosing rare diseases.               more than Hong Kong’s. Their
                                            health professionals are more
   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33