The Health Bureau today said the Government provides comprehensive and dedicated support for health and medical research projects, research infrastructure and research capacity building in Hong Kong through setting up the Health & Medical Research Fund (HMRF).

Making the statement in regard to some recent media reports on the Government’s funding support for infectious diseases-related research, the bureau emphasised that the Government has all along been highly supportive of the local health and medical sector to conduct health and medical research, including those related to infectious diseases.

The bureau noted that funding commitment to the HMRF, established in 2011, has been increased repeatedly and the approved amount has increased to $4.22 billion to support Government-commissioned programmes and investigator-initiated projects. Among them, those related to infectious diseases research amount to $1.2 billion.

Such projects involved six commissioned programmes on infectious diseases with approved funding of $792 million, covering COVID-19, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), influenza, avian flu, swine flu and other respiratory infectious diseases, human papilloma virus and anti-microbial resistance research.

The above-mentioned commissioned programmes include a total of $556 million since April 2020 to support 105 individual COVID-19 related research studies from bench to bedside and at the community level through application of new technologies.

These studies provide new evidence to support the Government to promptly tackle the COVID-19 epidemic by formulating health policies, identifying the transmission chains, implementing control measures, improving clinical management as well as developing and promoting the vaccination programme.

One of the research projects successfully developed the sewage testing approach for quantitative detection of SARS-CoV-2, providing an important indicator for the Government to keep track of virus activity in the community during the COVID-19 epidemic.

For investigator-initiated projects, infectious disease has always been one of the thematic priorities. As of end September 2024, a total of about 400 research studies have been funded amounting to $424 million.

Such studies covered the prevention, detection, diagnosis and management of various infectious diseases, such as the hepatitis virus, tuberculosis, AIDS, and those related to preparedness and response to a pandemic and epidemic.

The Government encourages researchers to continue to leverage the HMRF to amplify the value of their research projects into full play and usher in considerable and sustainable positive impacts on health policy making and implementation with their research outcomes and to unleash new quality productive forces.

On combating infectious diseases, the Government will continue to support the health and medical sector in conducting related research in order to enhance the capacity in surveillance, early detection, prevention and control.