Editorial | Traditional medicine has role in virus fight
- Treatments largely based on herbs have been around for thousands of years and will help complement Western medications for Covid-19 sufferers
China has been relying on traditional medicines largely based on herbs for thousands of years to deal with diseases and illness. Inevitably, they are being used alongside Western medications to treat coronavirus patients and have proven invaluable. With Hong Kong fighting off a fifth wave of the pandemic and every possibility that mutations will lead to future outbreaks, strengthening existing treatments with the help of mainland expertise makes good sense. Such a strategy, in effect, takes advantage of the best of both worlds.
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is already available in Hong Kong to recovering patients at special clinics. Mainland practitioners have for several weeks been accompanying local doctors trained in Western medicine on rounds among elderly at the AsiaWorld-Expo temporary facility to prescribe treatments for symptoms such as coughing and dry throat. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor welcomed more mainland TCM doctors yesterday.
Hong Kong has world-renowned schools to train doctors in Western medicine, but the city also has a well-established TCM sector, with about 10,000 practitioners compared to more than 14,000 Western-trained counterparts. For all the expertise, though, the mainland has greater knowledge as a result of its deep experience and well-funded research facilities. The fruits of that mastery are apparent in the national guidelines for fighting Covid-19, which include prescribed treatments for all stages of the disease that are available as drinks, pills and injections.
The global value of TCM was acknowledged internationally in 2015, when Chinese scientist Tu Youyou was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for her work in finding a treatment for malaria, the result of a study of traditional herbal remedies. But battling diseases should not be a matter of weighing up whether to use traditional or Western medicine, and that should be especially so where a new and fast-evolving coronavirus such as Covid-19 is concerned. Western drugs focus on quickly treating a disease through science, while TCM looks at a person’s well-being through balance, harmony and energy by tailor-making medications. Amid the threat of Covid, the two are complementary and Hong Kong is well-positioned to benefit.
