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| Chinese herbal medicine effective to treat SARS |
| CCTV.COM 2003-05-22 13:05:14 |
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Medical scientists have selected eight major Chinese herbal medicines that have proven to be effective in relieving the symptoms of SARS. The final selection, released by the Ministry of Science and Technology today, has provided a standard choice for treatment for SARS in all SARS－designated hospitals.
After almost a month of deliberation, eight patent Chinese herbal medicines have been selected from hundreds of traditional Chinese herbal medicines that have been on the market for years. The selected medicines are proven to be especially effective in safely relieving the SARS symptoms.
Zhang Zhijun, deputy head of Medicine R&D Team of China SARS Prevention and Control Panel, said, "We went through a complicated selection procedure, doing thousands of tests in the lab and on animals. All the medicines selected are specifically for four major symptoms: fever, breathing difficulties, organ pain, and pneumonia."
The final list provides a safe and effective choice for doctors in treating SARS. The purpose of making the list is to meet the urgent need to alleviate the pain of SARS sufferers, and reduce the death toll. However, experts say it is still too early to say definitely that traditional Chinese medicines can effectively cure the disease.
Feng Wenhua, associate professor from National Engineering Center for Development of New Drugs, said, "So far, all these Chinese herbal medicines are useful for alleviating the symptoms rather than curing the disease. There is still a lot of unknown regarding the SARS virus, so it could still take a long time to discover a medicine, either Western, Chinese or a combination of the two, that can effectively cure the disease."
Scientists around the world are working day and night to find out the effective treatment and medicine for SARS as soon as possible. In the fighting against the deadly virus, Chinese medical scientists are trying to establish a global role for TCM in the final treatment for SARS.
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Editor: Inner Wu CCTV.com
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