Health

Hong Kong earlier this month hosted its second Asia Summit on Global Health (ASGH), as the city continues to garner international attention after further loosening COVID-19 restrictions. This year’s theme – “Charting a New Course in Healthcare through Collaboration” resonated strongly with Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab (main picture), Deputy Director-General of the World Health Organization. In her video speech at the event’s opening session, Dr Jakab said the pandemic had infected more than 600 million people globally and claimed 6.5 million lives, so there was an “opportunity and, indeed, an obligation to learn from this pandemic” and accelerate progress on universal healthcare through concerted efforts in science, research, innovation, data and digital technologies.

Kung Wo Tong has been a well-established business for more than 100 years in Hong Kong. The company uses secret recipes passed down from the Qing dynasty to produce a herbal jelly using Guiling paste. The founder's granddaughter started her own business in recent years with her own brand Gui Ling Yuan Fang, aiming to modernise Hong Kong’s herbal tea culture and promote the concept of health preservation to a younger consumer base.

Two of the many issues created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting control measures were limited opportunities for exercise, especially indoors, and idle space in commercial buildings. Hong Kong entrepreneur Dinesh Nihalchand has come up with what he believes is a future-proof solution for the fitness business that offers contactless personal training while optimising under-utilised real-estate assets at the same time.

A serial entrepreneur based in Hong Kong for more than 20 years, France-born Sophie Martineau set up her medical supplies business Aquila Healthcare under the brand AquilaVIE in 2020. The launch was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks rapidly outpaced supply.