Traditional Chinese medicine should play a more important role
in China's effort to offer better medical services to the largest
number of people in the world, top health officials said.
As a comparatively
cheap but effective medical resource, traditional Chinese
medicine is vital to the country's more than 900 million farmers,
many of whom still lack basic medical care, Health Minister
Zhang Wenkang said.
More Chinese medicine
resources and doctors will be sent to rural areas where people
only spend 70 yuan (US$8.40) per year per capita on medicines,
said She Jing, director of the Traditional Chinese Medicine
Administration Bureau.
Only 30 percent
of the country's medical resources are in the rural areas
where about 70 percent of the nation's population resides.
Most of the 25,000
Chinese medical graduates went to rural areas last year, and
more practitioners will be trained to serve farmers in the
future.
Meanwhile, more
clinics offering Chinese healing methods like acupuncture
will be introduced in urban areas, too, to satisfy people's
increasing command of health care, She said.
She made the remarks
at the opening of the 2001 National Traditional Medicine Congress
yesterday in Beijing.
The central government
will create favorable finance policies to the country's 2,630
traditional medical hospitals, the majority of which are non-profit
entities.
The ministry has
decided to separate all 16,000 State-run hospitals into profit-making
and non-profit ones. The latter, which enjoy favorable tax
and finance support from the government, will bear much of
the responsibility to provide basic medical services for the
public.
National regulations
over traditional Chinese medicines have been drafted and sent
to the State Council for examination.
China's medical
authorities encouraged the healthy cooperation and communication
between domestic medical fields and the outside world. Traditional
Chinese medicine has become a thriving worldwide industry
in recent years.
More efforts will
be made to collect and document the valuable traditional treatment
methods from ancient books and well-known doctors, the director
said.
Meanwhile, the
industrialization of the high-tech traditional medicine items
have been listed as a key task in medical development during
the country's 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-05).
With China's accession
into the World Trade Organization looming, the country will
fund more research on traditional Chinese medical practices
to offer high-quality service and products, She added.
(China Daily 02/21/2001)
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