Golden Jubilee Scientific Meeting 2014

This year marks the 50^th Anniversary of our Department. Our Department is the first paediatric department in the territory. Over the last 5 decades, we grew from a humble 2 staff Department in a small ward at Queen Mary Hospital into a Department with hundreds of medical and nursing staff. Up till now, many of our alumni are eminent and respected paediatricians. Two years ago, we further expanded across the border into China mainland and established a twin Department in the HKU-Shenzhen Hospital. This hospital is a collaboration project between China Government and HKU. Our mission is to apply the “Hong Kong Model” of healthcare management to Shenzhen and we are glad to see that we are making impact in our motherland. In the near future, we will also partner with the Hong Kong Children’s Hospital at Kai Tak and Gleneagles Hospital at Wong Chuk Hang. These are new working models for us and we genuinely wish that they could benefit our patients and society. With all these changes, we expect tough challenges on our existing manpower and resources. On the other hand, we can consider them as precious opportunities for us to unite and progress. Even our current service covers almost all aspects of paediatric subspecialties, but further progress has been hindered by the small number of patients managed by each subspecialty. In the future, these hospitals will provide valuable platform for us to consolidate our local paediatric subspecialty development. We will be able to achieve adequate critical mass for training and education. Eventually, it will lead to better care for our patients. On the aspect of laboratory and clinical research, we continue to focus on the 3 major themes including immunology, stem cells and genetics. These 3 can link our different subspecialties together. In the new era of cellular therapy, targeted therapy and gene therapy, we have to prepare ourselves for this paradigm shift. As child health is another important domain in paediatrics, we will further expand our community paediatric program which promotes the concept of child health. This has been the major service gap in paediatrics previously. While all these ambitious plans are exciting, let us remember they are built on the solid foundation of our first 50 years. Our pioneer has set the path for us to move forwards and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our seniors and colleagues who contribute to the development of our Department. We vow to keep the momentum going for another 50 years, and another 50 years ……

Professor Godfrey Chi-Fung Chan

Head, Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine

LKS Faculty of Medicine

The University of Hong Kong