Traditional Chinese medicine should play a more important role in China's strive to offer better medical services for the largest number of people in the world, Health Minister Zhang Wenkang said.
As a comparatively cheap but effective medical resource, the traditional Chinese medicine is vital to the country's more than 900 million farmers, many of whom still lack basic medical care, Zhang 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, 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 Tuesday in Beijing.
