Abstract
As millions of immigrants moved to Hong Kong (HK) from China in the recent decades, large amount of residential housings were built in the early years and a substantial proportion of those buildings used asbestos-containing materials (ACMs). Since the number of new cases of ARDs diagnosed has increased year by year since 1990’s, the remarkable increase of incidences had drawn the attention of the public and most importantly the HK government. It became one of the trigger points leading to asbestos ban in HK history. Comparatively, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions and patients’ self-help organizations demonstrated a more aggressive and proactive attitude than the HK government and have played a key role in the development of asbestos banning policy in HK. After numerous petitions and meetings with the government representatives by those parties in the past decade, the HK government eventually changed its attitude and started to consider terminating the endless threat from asbestos by amending the policy, and the new clause of legislation for banning of all forms of asbestos was enacted on 4 April 2014. Other than the restriction of asbestos use, the compensation system about ARDs has also made some great moves by the effort of those parties as well. Based on the experience we learnt through the years, efforts from different stakeholders including patients’ self-help organizations, NGOs, legislative councilors, and media power are absolutely essential to the success of progression and development in today’s asbestos banning in HK.
Highlights
Hong Kong (HK), a city located on the Southeast coast of China, is the first Special AdministrativeRegion (SAR) established under the policy of “One Country, Two Systems” [1]
Authors reviewed relevant documents and sources, including data released by local government, results from previous researches, position papers on asbestos issue submitted by different interested parties, and examined the factors leading to the asbestos ban and establishment of the compensation system for asbestos-related diseases
According to the data of Hong Kong Cancer Registry gathered by previous study, the age-standardized incidence rate of mesothelioma was less than 0.5 per million populations in 1976–1990
Summary
Hong Kong (HK), a city located on the Southeast coast of China, is the first Special AdministrativeRegion (SAR) established under the policy of “One Country, Two Systems” [1]. Hong Kong (HK), a city located on the Southeast coast of China, is the first Special Administrative. Gifted with the wonderful geographical location in Asia-Pacific region and the renowned deep-water harbor between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, HK is one of the biggest import and re-export centers on the globe, acting as a bridge to associate between Mainland China and other countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America [2,4]. 2016, according to the HK government’s data, with the amount of USD$513.9 billion from import and. USD$454.5 billion from re-export [5]. The population has increased dramatically in the recent decades. The population of HK jumped from 456,739 in 1911 to 3,129,648 in 1961 and
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