Professor Tze Wai WONG (黄子惠教授)
MBBS, MSc (Public Health), FAFOM, FFPH, FRCP (Glasg), FHKAM, FHKCCM.

Professor, School of Public Health and Primary Care
Co-Director, Centre for Occupational & Environmental Health Studies

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Professor Wong Tze Wai is an environmental epidemiologist and occupational physician with experience in public health practice and research over a wide variety of topics that include infectious diseases (notably hantavirus studies, plague and SARS), environmental health (air pollution and health, and dioxins) and occupational health (noise induced hearing loss, occupational accidents), and other health problems. Educated in the medical school of The University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore, Professor Wong has worked in the service and research sectors in both cities. As an industrial health officer, Professor Wong experienced the flourishing manufacturing industries and the high prevalence of compressed air illness in the construction of the mass transit railway in Hong Kong in the mid-1970s, and gained much experience in occupational health practice. As a public health practitioner in Hong Kong, he worked with Vietnamese refugees in the early 1980s and wrote a dissertation on this unique group of displaced people. He was trained in plague and other infectious diseases in the Center for Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control U.S. in the early 1980s. While working as a research fellow in the WHO Collaborating Laboratory for Hantavirus Reference and Research in Korea University Medical College, his research on the seroepidemiology of hantaviruses in Singapore led to the isolation of a new strain of Seoul-like hantavirus in rodents. His research in this area resulted in the award of the Certificate of Merit by Prof. Ho Wang Lee, Director of the laboratory and the discoverer of the Hantaan virus. Besides infectious diseases, Professor Wong was also involved in a WHO collaborative study on traffic accidents in Singapore. In The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Professor Wong was Director of Diploma programmes on occupational health sciences for over a decade. In research, besides his involvement in occupational health studies such as noise and hearing loss and occupational accidents, he is currently mostly engaged in studies on air pollution and its impact on health. He has conducted many consultative studies initiated by the Environmental Protection Department. Many of these studies were first reported by Professor Wong in Hong Kong, including one on air pollution and GP consultations. With his experience as a practitioner in infectious disease control, he volunteered in the investigation of SARS in the Prince of Wales Hospital during the 2003 outbreak. This led to the publication of several important papers on the transmission of this novel disease. He has published over 150 papers in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals, more than 100 conference papers or abstracts, contributed to several books and more than 30 research reports. He has served on many governmental committees on environment and infectious diseases. He is currently a member of the Advisory Council on the Environment and a member of the Advisory Panel on the Review of Air Quality Objectives of the Environmental Protection Department. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee on Disease Modeling of the Centre for Health Protection and a scientific adviser of the Hong Kong Observatory. Academically, he is Visiting Professor of the School of Public Health and Primary Care of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. He is currently heading a study on the Air Pollution Reporting System commissioned by the Environmental Protection Department, and another study on exposure to dioxins and other persistent organic pollutants among women in Hong Kong, commissioned by the Department of Health. His recent efforts are focused on air pollution control, and he has been a vocal advocate for the improvement of air quality in Hong Kong.

Undergraduate:                         

(Medical)                                                                                 
- Year One: Environmental Health; Evidence-based Medicine                               
- Year Two: Smoking and health, Environmental lung diseases                                                                          
- Year Four: Environmental Health, the Investigation of Disease Outbreaks

(Minor)
- Foundations of Public Health, Occupational and Environmental Health; Infectious Diseases

Postgraduates:                                                                                                         
- Diploma of Occupational Health Sciences and Master of Occupational Medicine: Various
  Occupational Diseases, laws, surveillance and monitoring of workers;    
- MPH: Environmental Health, air pollution, and investigation of disease outbreaks;

Postgraduate research students:                                                                            
- On topics of air pollution, infection control and environmental health.

• Air pollution and health
• Environmental epidemiology
• Health impact of air pollution control
• Long-term impact of air pollution on respiratory health
• Infectious diseases epidemiology
• Occupational health