Hong Kong targets childhood myopia with combination therapies

The city prioritises early intervention while tackling regulatory and financial hurdles.

Hong Kong is intensifying its focus on lowering childhood myopia levels, with experts prioritising combination treatments and broader access to care.

“I think in the next five or 10 years, we will keep doing well in controlling myopia, and try our best,” said Dr. Vincent Ng, Associate Consultant Optometrist at the School of Optometry, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Immediate Past President of the HKSPO.

“There's no safe margin, also no safe level of myopia. Our priority is giving our best options, no matter mono therapy or even the combined therapy, to treat our children, to get their mouth as low as possible.” he told Healthcare Asia during the 2025 Asia-Pacific Myopia Management Symposium in Hong Kong.

With rapid advances in myopia control technology, Dr. Ng noted that combination therapies offer stronger control today. “We can utilise all of them. We can utilise combined therapy, rather than mono therapy, to control children's myopia as soon and as quickly as possible,” he said.

However, regulatory and financial barriers remain. “In Hong Kong, limited by the regulation as optometrists, we cannot prescribe HRP indirectly. We have to refer the patient to see an ophthalmologist,” Dr. Ng explained.

Cost is also a growing concern for families. “All myopia control is not cheap. They are so expensive, especially when the children get myopia from a young age, they need to receive such kind of treatment...for at least seven years, eight years or even 10 years,” Dr. Ng added.

He called for government support to ease the burden on low-income families. “Hopefully not the parents themselves, but the government can have some subsidies...for the small group of underpaid children,” he said.