Ms. PONG Scarlett Oi-lan, BBS, JP
Chairman, Organising Committee of the 9th Global Conference of AFHC 2021
Vice Chairman, AFHC China Hong Kong Chapter
Prior to the arrival of a new century in the Year 2000, a concerted effort was made to tackle a superbug named “Millennium bug” (Y2K bug). Contrary to public expectation, few major errors occurred upon organized efforts to minimize the damage and to avert the anticipated disaster. History does not repeat itself. Shortly after the decade of 2020 began, a dreadful bug called COVID-19 emerged and began to rapidly spread around the world.
The mutation of COVID-19 to Delta Variant and lately to Delta Plus is undoubtfully unwelcome and continues to bring along unprecedented impacts worldwide in all aspects of life. Despite most people having now adopted the so-called “new normal”, we are still striving by every means to explore possible ways to tackle the situation as well as to share our knowledge and experience. Such that was well demonstrated by the enthusiastic participation and dedication by the AFHC members to promote the Healthy Cities movement in their respective cities.
Based on the theme – Smarter Healthy Cities Beyond COVID-19, the speakers from Hong Kong and overseas who are practitioners, academics, and other distinguished leaders in the field of health, environmental, and related disciplines have contributed inspirational and innovative ways to meet the challenges ahead.
The change of the usual conference format to the webinar did attract more interested participants across the world to join in. All keynote sessions and symposiums will be presented online with simultaneous interpretation in four languages, namely English, Japanese, Korean and Putonghua. “Webinar playback” is a new feature included in the website design, thus allowing participants of different time zones to view the presentation at ease.
Last but not least, may we express our thankfulness for the tremendous support given by the Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the government officials of the HKSAR. We all appreciate the opportunity to work in close liaison with the respective offices.
I am thrilled to report that we all are ready. Look forward to seeing you online next Wednesday morning, 3rd November 2021 at 0900.