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Transition care in Hong Kong.

The main objective of the transition from paediatric to adult health care services is to ensure that all adolescents continue to receive coordinated care after reaching adulthood.1 Medical personnel understand that when children grow up, there are adulthoodrelated issues such as pregnancy or drug-related illnesses that many paediatricians are not equipped to deal with. Thus, transferring patient care to adult facilities is often an essential and unavoidable event in the medical journey for children. There is now ample evidence that children who acquire a major physical illness at an early age, such as chronic kidney disease, are also at risk of cognitive developmental delays.2 Thus, while all youths eventually experience transition in health care, paediatricians are particularly concerned about youths with physical and/or cognitive disabilities. Medical care for these individuals is often more complex: they will generally also need long-term therapies and require extra attention due to the accompanying suboptimal cognitive maturity. In order for their health care to successfully transition to adult facilities, it is crucial that these vulnerable youths receive sufficient and appropriate preparation. Although the literature suggests that many children with physical and cognitive disabilities suffer profound and prolonged morbidities due to ineffective health care transitioning, paediatric caregivers in Hong Kong face wideranging predicaments both within and outside the health care system. Problems include the lack of a comprehensive health care policy, scarcity of transition programmes, inadequate physician training, and inadequate education and preparation of patients and/or their family. In “A proposal on child health policy for Hong Kong” published by the Hong Kong Paediatric Society in August 2015,3 paediatric health care professionals expressed their desire to set up and implement a comprehensive, yet effective child health care policy to address the many health care challenges in Hong Kong. The professional panel pointed out that among all major concerns, there was ultimately a lack of coordinated and uninterrupted care for children with special care needs and medical complexities. In particular, the transition of care for such children was especially fragmented. Transition preparations for children with Hong Kong Med J 2016;22:408–9 DOI: 10.12809/hkmj165060 Keith K Lau *, FHKCPaed, FHKAM (Paediatrics)