Lam has been working hard on the Bachelor of Science course - along with 37 others - since classes began in September.

And with the human swine flu (H1N1) pandemic, public health is getting to be more of an issue than ever.

Lam said she chose the course "because public health is really important to the whole world."

She was personally touched by the 2003 SARS outbreak. "One of my teachers got SARS and it was quite a big issue. She's well now," Lam said.

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Of her studies so far, she said: "I really like them. I enjoy all the courses I'm taking. They're all very interesting."

Lam has made site visits to the Labour Department, the Centre for Health Protection and the Centre for Food Safety. She has also been to talks by another SARS victim, former Hospital Authority chief executive William Ho Shiu-wei, as part of the curriculum.

As for job opportunities, Lam said: "I'm hoping to work in the government ... like the Department of Health."

The woman who made the course happen is Sian Griffiths, SARS expert committee co-chairman who investigated the outbreak for the government.

Griffiths, who is now director of the School of Public Health and Primary Care at the university, said the course is the only one of its kind in Hong Kong.

"The focus of our work is postgraduate education, training and research," she said of the school.

"We teach both public health and primary care because we believe that we need to be multi-disciplinary, that we need to promote community- based care and this is in line with international trends."

Primary care includes individual clinical care while public health is care of the general population.

"So we are interested in individuals and their care in the community as well as population science and its application to the community."

The BSc program is a general health degree that may lead to the study of wider subjects.

"We have the education run- through. Basically what we are hoping is that some of our BSc students in three years' time will do masters and some of the clever ones might want to do a PhD, so you have more career opportunities in public health at the end of the day," Griffiths said.