Preventive services advertised to the public by private hospitals in Hong Kong

Prevention is clearly the best ‘cure’ for disease. It is mainly achieved through socio-economic advancement, public health measures, and community health services such as antenatal care, postnatal care, and immunisation programmes. Doctors play their role through encouraging behaviour change and screening to detect diseases early. Much of this preventive medicine is done by doctors in their practices dealing with individual patients, and it is offered to the public commercially through direct advertising by laboratories and hospitals. In Hong Kong, various organisations advertise preventive services in convenient ‘packages’, which are often called check-up, health maintenance, or physical examination packages. These schemes provide a wide range of components.