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Novel Coronavirus Susceptible to Treatment With Traditional Chinese Medicines - So Spake Xi - Reflect on That

"The epidemic overall is under control. This epidemic is truly sudden. It has brought a challenge to China and the world."
"We've taken such complete prevention and control efforts, efforts that are so comprehensive, that I can't see any other country that can do this. But China has been able to do this."
"Some countries have stepped up measures including quarantine measures, which are reasonable and understandable, but for some countries they have ever-reacted, which has triggered unnecessary panic."
"I'm sure that those countries are reflecting on this as the situation evolves and the epidemic is gradually brought under further control. They will gradually release such restrictions. Because at the end of the day, these countries need to interact with China."

State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi

"From the beginning, we took a very open and transparent manner in releasing information to the international community's co-operation on this effort. We're not just defending the life, safety and health of Chinese citizens, but also making our contribution for global public health, and that should be recognized."
"Only under the leadership of President Xi can we control this sudden epidemic, which has spread so quickly. This is not only to defend the health of the Chinese people, but also will prevent the rapid spread of this epidemic in the world."
"We have taken the most correct, the most rigorous and decisive measures to fight against the epidemic. Many measures went beyond international health regulations and the WHO recommendations."
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

An employee wears a protective face mask at a traditional Chinese medicine store in Beijing on Saturday. A claim by Chinese scientists that a liquid made with honeysuckle and flowering plants could help fight the deadly coronavirus has sparked frenzied buying of the traditional medicine, but doubts quickly emerged. | AFP-JIJI

No cure or protocol has yet been devised for the coronavirus that has struck China. According to China's National Health Commission, doctors would do well to treat patients with a combination of Western drugs used in the treatment of HIV and to fight viruses, but not to neglect the use of traditional remedies to supplement the treatment. China's national identity is reflected in its use of traditional Chinese medicines. "I think it is the correct approach", remarked Cheng Yung-chi, professor of pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine. "We have to give it the benefit of the doubt".

And there is little question that eyebrows will be raised among conventional Western medical practitioners in doubt that Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill, a traditional Chinese medicine using cattle gallstones, buffalo horn, jasmine and pearl would be the least bit efficacious. No clinical proof exists that the roots of plants, licorice and the Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill could, through any stretch of the imagination, prove to be useful in combating the deadly epidemic.

But traditional Chinese practitioners are convinced that the regimen could at the very least ease symptoms such as swelling in the lungs, and produce fewer side effects. Patient safety, however, remains uppermost in the minds of critics of the Chinese pharmacopoeia. China's President Xi Jinping,however, is anxious to harness ancient Chinese remedies as a matter of national pride, claiming officials should place equal important on traditional Chinese medicines as they do on Western medicines.

Chinese medicine, attest Chinese medical practitioners, would mitigate adverse reactions such as that which occurred when steroids prescribed to reduce inflammation during the Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak in 2002-03, had harmful side effects such as bone destruction. The National Health Commission in recommendion to treat the coronavirus, that traditional Chinese medicine remedies be used with antiretroviral HIV drugs such as Lopinavir in which hope has been invested for clinical trials.

Twenty-three coronavirus patients were discharged from hospital on Thursday after treatment with both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Photo: Xinhua

The Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill is recommended for severe symptoms such as wheezing, with some hospitals using a combination of both. Beijing's health department is attributing traditional Chinese medicines' involvement with the discharge of two patients who had been treated with them along with other unspecified drugs. Fifty patients in Guangzhou province, according to officials there, reported having no more fever, and half claimed their coughs disappeared after the use of traditional Chinese medicines and other drugs.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, disease arises from imbalances in the body where some people have "hot" constitutions, leaving them vulnerable to inflammations. The coronavirus, according to practitioners, is a "hot" disease. Whereas in Hong Kong, doctors remain unconvinced that traditional Chinese medicine can be useful. "I am not trying to devalue their treatment, but this is not something we practise", noted Arisina Ma, president of a Hong Kong doctors group.

"Shuanghuanglian", a herbal concoction of flowers such as honeysuckle and forsythia which a government study concluded it to be effective in preventing the cornavirus has seen crowds of people standing in line for hours to buy the herbal mix. "As for whether it works, who knows?", said Qin Xi, a manager of a pharmacy in Beijing, speaking of sales of some of his traditional Chinese medicines being right off the charts.

This picture taken on November 7, 2018 shows a woman mixing medicine in the pharmacy of the Yueyang Hospital, part of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in Shanghai. Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images

Labels: China, Coronavirus, Traditional Medicines

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 18, 2020