themselves.
These experts would like to see legislation introduced which standardizes the various substances used in traditional
medicine, and also the standards of hygiene in the places where the ingredients are dispensed, stored and shipped.
Several sources also advocated the introduction of legis- lation requiring proper labelling, so that a traditional prac- titioner of Chinese medicine could not give a patient some- thing which was not what it was purported to be.
A member of the Community Medicine Department of Hongkong University echoed the sentiment that legislation restricting the practice of traditional Chinese medicine in Hongkong.
She hoped that the Government would decide to intro- duce some kind of licensing authority which would accord traditional practitioners some kind of professional status.
Another suggestion made was to introduce a 3- or 4- month introductory course on Chinese medicine into stan- dard Western medical degrees in Hongkong so that all doctors to be newly qualified in Hongkong would be familiar, at least, with the kind of treatment that many of their patients would be likely to have received in Hongkong and China.
In the US, there are already regulations in place in many states which have ruled that practitioners of Chinese tradi- tional medicine must be fully qualified and that they must pass an examination which entitles them to a licence to prac-
tice.
In California, the Department of Consumer Affairs has a Board of Medical Quality Assurance which requires that
medical doctors undertake a year's study in, for example, acupuncture, before applying to take the
Board's examination which must be
passed before a licence to practise is issued.
There are many accredited colleges in the US currently offering students full degree courses in traditional Chinese medicine.
States which license practitioners include Arizona, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Ne- vada, New Mexico, New York and Wash- ington, to name but a few.
A recent questionnaire amongst doc- tors in Japan practising Western medi- cine found that some 70 percent had started to introduce aspects of traditional
Chinese medicine into their treatment of patients.
Many experts have suggested that the traditional method of treatment is a much more holistic type of medicine which is far more suitable in dealing with long-term degenerative diseases than the type of instant treatments, which often have negative side effects, that are more typical of the Western model.
Such a suggestion appears to be borne out by public per- ceptions of Chinese traditional medicine.
According to a survey conducted in Hongkong during the early 1980's, 57.9 percent of respondents replied that Chi- nese medicine offered better tonic care than Western medi-
cine, as opposed to 10.2 percent who thought that Western medicine was a better system of maintaining health.
In Hongkong, there are at least 3 organisations con- cerned with the practice of herbalism.
Sin Hua Herbalists and Herb Dealers Promotion Society includes members who are currently practising traditional
medicine.
Chin Wah Chinese Medical Institute consists of people interested in Chinese medicine and the organisation runs classes on the subject.
At the Chinese University, although there is no degree course on the subject, the Chinese Medicinal Material Research Centre (CMMRC) has been in operation since 1984 with the stated aim ‘to evaluate the efficacy of tradi- tional Chinese medicines and to put them on a more scien-
tific basis.'
Dr C.M.Lee, an Associate Director of CMMRC, ex- plained that herbalism (which includes bone-setting and acu-
东方红
TUNG FONG HUNG
MEDICINE COMPANY LTD.
Traditional remedies are big business
puncture as well as herbalism in the conventional sense) can make major contributions to current medical knowledge by scientific analysis of the active ingredients of various different
compounds which have been used in
prescriptions by Chinese herbalists for hundreds of years.
According to CMMRC, of the 120 new pharmaceuticals developed on the Mainland over the last 30 years, 60 percent were derived either directly or indirectly from traditional medicines. According to one report, in 1960 4 out of 5 children in the UK with leu-
kaemia died.
However, after research into the
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