A shot in the arm for TCM(2)

On April 19, the Hospital Authority of Hong Kong sent respiratory disease experts to the hospital to learn from the experiences there. Four days after the visit, Ko Wing-man, acting chief executive of the Hospital Authority in 2003, called Lu Yubo, the director of the hospital at the time, and asked him to send two experts to Hong Kong to help with SARS treatment.

"I had two major concerns at that time," said Lu. "In Hong Kong, doctors of traditional Chinese medicine are not allowed to use modern medical equipment. To combine traditional Chinese and Western medicines, they had to obtain approval from doctors of Western medicine. Moreover, if the treatment was not effective, the reputation of TCM would suffer. How could I take this responsibility? Besides, our best doctors were mainly seniors. Clinical results showed that people aged 50 or older were at high risk once infected with the SARS virus. What would I do if they didn't come back?"

Eventually, Lu decided to send Yang Zhimin and Lin Lin, two capable middle-aged doctors, to Hong Kong. At first, the doctors of Western medicine only allowed the TCM practitioners to treat the most severely ill SARS patients. Yang and Lin used TCM to improve the patients' conditions by stopping their diarrhea and increasing the strength in their hands and feet. Step by step, they proved the effectiveness of TCM, and the other doctors began to introduce them to patients in the early stages of SARS.

According to a statistical analysis report conducted by the Hospital Authority, a combination of TCM and Western medicine resulted in a fall in the required steroid dose, according to Yang.

After SARS, TCM was used in major public health emergencies. During outbreaks of bird flu, H1N1 flu and other infectious diseases, the government asked for a TCM treatment option in addition to Western therapy and allowed TCM hospitals to treat contagious patients.

In Hong Kong, the Hospital Authority included TCM in its scope of management, set up TCM clinics at a number of public hospitals and provided a certain amount of government reimbursement for TCM treatments. Those actions had a marked effect on the development of TCM.