Traditional Chinese medicine might be able to cure viral hepatitis and ascites due to cirrhosis, as released by a medical monograph of an expert in hepatitis.
In his newly published book of "Study on Cirrhosis," Wang Yue, doctor with the Epidemic Prevention Station in Qufu City of east China's Shandong Province, said that materials extracted from a herb can kill the virus that causes hepatitis B.
Sources said that clinic experiments carried out among about 388 cases prove the validity of the herb material. Medicine was produced based on that material in 1998 and has been approved through a provincial test.
Wang also abandoned traditional methods for treating ascites and found a new therapy, which has healed at least one patient suffering from late-period ascites due to cirrhosis.
Wang started to collect and examine herbs with medical efficiency in the mountainous areas in the 1980s. He has developed more than 200 therapies dealing with various diseases and was rewarded by Ministry of Health.
The central government will create favourable 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 favourable 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 co-operation 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 both domestically and overseas, She added.
