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