Traditional Chinese medicine gains popularity worldwide

 China Youth Connection
September 29, 2005

CHENGDU, Sept 29 -- More and more people in foreign countries are beginning to believe in the effectiveness of Chinese traditional medicine, leading to the rapid growth of the traditional Chinese medicine industry.

The on-going Second International Science and Technology Conference on Traditional Chinese Medicine, held in Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, has drawn more than 3,000 government officials, representatives from pharmaceutical firms and scientists and researchers from 43 countries and regions.

Statistics from China's science and technology department show that 124 countries and regions have established traditional Chinese medicine institutions.

Information from the conference shows that Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) are the two East Asian nations which see popular use of traditional Chinese medicine other than China.

Currently, Japan has approximately 15,000 people engaged in businesses related to traditional Chinese medicine. About 100,000 people there do needle therapy and close to close to 30,000 peopleresearch traditional Chinese medicine. Japan's output of Chinese herbal medicine preparation has risen by 50 percent to 60 percent annually in recent years.

ROK has developed a Chinese medicine market of over one billion US dollars.

Traditional Chinese medicine is not only used by Asian countries, but also has become legal in many European and Americancountries.

France has acknowledged the practice of acupuncture anaesthesiaand the traditional Chinese medicine has been included in the curriculum of France's medical institutions of higher learning. Chinese herbal medicine was included in France's medical insurancein 1999.

Currently, France has more than 10,000 people engaged in traditional Chinese medicine-related businesses, over 2,600 traditional Chinese medicine clinics and nearly a dozen acupuncture schools.

Germany is the Western European nation where Chinese medicine is most popular. People can buy Chinese medicine in most drugstores.

In Australia, at least 2.8 million people visit traditional Chinese medicine doctors each year and there are more than 2,000 doctors of traditional Chinese doctors in Sydney and Melbourne, respectively. Other cities in Australia have at least several hundred doctors of traditional Chinese medicine, and associations of traditional Chinese medicine have proliferated in the country.

Traditional Chinese medicine is gradually obtaining legal recognition in the United States, where there are 15,000 registered acupuncturists and 53 schools of traditional Chinese medicine. It has been incorporated into medical insurance by an increasing number of US insurance firms.

The World Health Organization predicted that the development and utilization of traditional Chinese medicine would spring up ina full-scale in the coming ten years.

The three-day conference will display the latest science and technology in traditional Chinese medicine, the industrial prospects and international cooperation.

Participants in the conference will focus on such topics as high technology in modern traditional Chinese medicine, sustainable growth and the utilization of traditional Chinese medicine resources, and clinical research of the effectiveness andsafety of traditional Chinese medicine.

Source：xinhua