A shot in the arm for TCM

During the SARS outbreak, traditional Chinese medicine made a great contribution to curing the previously unknown and deadly disease. As a result, TCM won the recognition of the World Health Organization and improved its status on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao.

On Jan 7, 2003, Guangzhou resident Huang Shengfa developed a high fever and went to the Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine for treatment. Because the symptoms differed from those of pneumonia, and the patient's condition was serious, the hospital invited experts from other medical institutes to attend a group consultation.

Later that month, seven doctors and nurses who had been in contact with Huang displayed the same symptoms and were hospitalized. The doctors realized that they had caught a highly contagious disease, later confirmed as SARS.

At first, the doctors treated patients with TCM by adopting a plague treatment regime, whereby patients were isolated to limit transmission, and discovered that it was effective. But a combination of TCM and Western medicine proved highly effective in treating some patients whose conditions were severe.

On April 7, James H. Maguire, an infectious disease specialist with the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an expert with the World Health Organization, visited the hospital and listened to the doctors' reports on the treatment of SARS. By that time, the hospital had admitted 50 patients with SARS. By the time the epidemic ended, the number had risen to 112.

Maguire discovered from the reports that the average length of stay at the hospital was shorter than in other hospitals that used Western medicine exclusively, and the patients did not have a recurrence after taking TCM. Moreover, the duration of the fever was also shorter.