Centre for Excellence - Statistical Facts

General profile of persons with disabilities Numbers of Places, Service Units of Rehabilitation Service and Waiting List

General profile of persons with disabilities

A territory-wide survey on persons with disabilities and chronic diseases was conducted during November 2006 to December 2007 to estimate the total number and prevalence rate of persons with selected types of disability and chronic diseases. 361,300 persons had one or more of the following types of disability: (1) restriction in body movement; (2) seeing difficulty; (3) hearing difficulty; (4) speech difficulty; (5) mental illness/mood disorder; (6) Autism; (7) Specific Learning Difficulty (SpLD); and (8) Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). Approximately 238,900 (66.1%) of those 361,300 persons with disabilities (excluding persons with ID only, with single disability/ multiple disabilities,) were with one and only one type of disability. Since ID was not included, some persons with one and only one type of disability might have the condition of ID at the same time. The other 122,400 (33.9%) were with multiple disabilities.

Persons with individual types of disability

Types	Number of persons	prevalence rate of persons	Remarks
Restriction in body movement	187,800	2.7%	41,100 persons with restriction in body movement (or 21.9% of all persons with restrictions in body movement) always required a wheelchair to move/walk around. 71,600 persons with restriction in body movement (or 38.1% of all persons with restriction in body movement) always required specialized aids/tools (e.g. crutches) to move/walk around, but did not require a wheelchair.
Seeing difficulty	122,600	1.8%	11,400 persons with seeing difficulty (or 9.3% of all persons with seeing difficulty) were unable to see at all.
Hearing difficulty	92,200	1.3%	8,600 persons with hearing difficulty (or 9.3% of all persons with hearing difficulty) were unable to hear at all.
Speech difficulty	28,400	0.4%	18,900 persons with speech difficulty (or 66.6% of all persons with speech difficulty) were unable to speak at all.
Mental illness / mood disorder	86,600	1.3%
Autism	3,800	0.1%
SpLD	9,900	0.1%
AD/HD	5,500	0.1%
General profile of persons with chronic diseases 1,152,700 persons required long-term (i.e. lasting at least 6 months) medical treatment, consultation or medication for certain type(s) of diseases, representing about 16.7% of the total population of Hong Kong. The three most commonly cited diseases that required long-term medical treatment, consultation or medication were hypertension (48.9% of those 1,152,700 persons), diabetes mellitus（20.0%）and heart diseases（11.7%）。