Viability of the Health Protection Account in Hong Kong: Authors' reply

published_or_final_versio

A Gibbs-sampler approach to estimate the number of faults in a system using capture-recapture sampling

A new recapture debugging model is suggested to estimate the number of faults in a system, ν, and the failure intensity of each fault, φ. The Gibbs sampler and the Metropolis algorithm are used in this inference procedure. A numerical illustration suggests a notable improvement on the estimation of ν and φ compared with that of a removal debugging model.published_or_final_versio

Economic and environmental factors in Hong Kong suicides

We study the geographical suicide pattern in Hong Kong and examine the influence of socio-economic status on suicides. The geographical distributions of suicide at different age categories (youth, middle-aged, and elderly) varied albeit those of the youth and middle-aged seemed more alike. High population density would lead to more youth and middle-aged suicides while a high proportion of Cantonese speaking residents and low proportion of owner-occupiers would lead to more middle-aged suicides. Four etiological factors of suicides - financial status, environmental setting, self-independence, and homemakers (mainly housewives) - were identified. Strong financial status and self-independence with less homemakers would decrease suicide rates at all age categories. Poor environmental factors would however increase suicide in the youth and middle-aged categories.postprin

Chronic diseases: challenges and opportunities

postprintThe 2010 International Conference on Promoting Chronic Care, Hong Kong, 8-10 January 2010

Towards Evidence-based Suicide Prevention Programmes

Fulltext available: http://www.wpro.who.int/mnh/TowardsEvidencebasedSPP.pd

Modelling the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic [3]

published_or_final_versio

A comparison of seasonal variation between suicide deaths and attempts in Hong Kong SAR

Background: Seasonal variations in suicide deaths and attempted suicides have been reported for many countries. Recent research has suggested that seasonal patterns of suicide deaths have diminished considerably. The seasonality pattern between attempts and completed ones are not the same. This paper is the first one to examine seasonal variation between suicide deaths and attempts simultaneously. Method: Census and Statistics Department and the Hospital Authority provided mortality and morbidity data on suicides for the period 1997-2001 in Hong Kong SAR, respectively. Seasonal patterns of suicide deaths and attempts were examined by a harmonic analysis and a non-parametric chi-square test. Results: A significant seasonal variation was detected in suicide attempts with a markedly bi-seasonal pattern was found amongst females with a peak in May and October; only a cyclic pattern was observed for males with a peak in summer. The female attempters who used non-violent suicide methods contributed to the second peak in October. On the other hand, there was no evidence of significant differences in the seasonal distribution among the suicide deaths for males and females. Only a mild pattern was found amongst females involving in violent suicide deaths, while others can be treated as a random event and no significantly pattern was observed in our study. Overall, a significant difference in seasonal variation existed between suicide deaths and attempts (p-value<0.01). Conclusions: This study reinforces the findings that seasonal variation in suicide appears to be diminishing. Also, suicide attempters and completed suicides in Hong Kong seem to arise from two non-identical but overlapping groups in the community. © 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.postprin

Workplace violence towards nurses in Hong Kong : prevalence and correlates

Version of RecordPublishe

Estimating population size in proportional trapping-removal models

We examine the inference problem of a proportional trapping model introduced by Good, Lewis, Gaskins and Howell (1979), and consider a similar removal model in continuous time. The existence and uniqueness of the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters are studied. Corresponding variance estimates are also given. Martingale theory is used to obtain the asymptotic properties, and simulations are conducted to examine the performance of the estimation procedure.published_or_final_versio

Statistical analysis of removal experiments with the use of auxillary variables

Conditional likelihood methods are applied to data from removal experiments to both model capture probabilities in terms of auxiliary variables, corresponding to observable individual characteristics and environmental conditions, and to estimate the size of the population. Asymptotic properties of the resulting estimators are derived and the methods are applied to a data set which include time dependent covariates. A simulation study is also given.published_or_final_versio