On April 5, "WHO says that traditional Chinese medicine can effectively cure the new crown" became a hot topic.
Source: Official website of the World Health Organization
In China and many countries around the world, Chinese medicine has played a huge and definite role in the fight against the epidemic. On 31 March, the WHO official website released the minutes of a seminar on "Traditional Chinese Medicine for the Treatment of COVID-19". The minutes show that after reviewing the 3 reports, 21 experts from WHO collectively concluded that:
These data show that when Chinese medicines are combined with traditional antiviral drugs, the results are "both safe and effective".
Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the treatment of traditional Chinese medicine has been a topic of great concern. Since the beginning of the epidemic in Wuhan in 2020, traditional Chinese medicine has been used in large quantities in epidemic prevention and has received good results. But on the other hand, doubts about the efficacy of Traditional Chinese medicine have never stopped.
This WHO assessment meeting has also been questioned, what is the truth?
Based on data submitted by China, WHO recognizes the efficacy of Traditional Chinese medicines
The WHO workshop was not a "whim".
On January 20 this year, Huang Luqi, deputy director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, went to the WHO headquarters in Geneva to submit to the World Health Organization the "Research Report on the Evidence-based Evaluation of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Treatment of COVID-19" – the most authoritative research result in China's fight against COVID-19 in traditional Chinese medicine. With this report in hand, Huang Luqi launched a discussion with WHO on the topic of "cooperation in the field of traditional Chinese medicine and traditional medicine".
"It is hoped that WHO will conduct a positive and objective assessment of the advantages and role of traditional Chinese medicine in this outbreak." Huang Luqi said.
Source: The official website of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine
On 31 March, WHO released the minutes of the meeting, which included the above-mentioned "evidence-based evaluation" study, as well as two reports on clinical applications and scientific research.
The three reports detail the clinical application of TCM in the fight against COVID-19, the progress of scientific research, and the method of selecting randomized experiments.
According to the three reports, Chinese medicine can play a role in "all stages of the new crown virus infection". For example, in the mild and moderate stages, Chinese medicine treatment can shorten the time to "clear the virus"; in the severe stage, the mortality rate of receiving Chinese medicine treatment is 1.2%, compared with 4.8% for those who do not receive it; and in the prevention or recovery stage, Chinese medicine nursing can play a role in "promoting health" and "improving quality of life".
In addition, the report said that there are more than 20 domestic studies showing that traditional Chinese medicine helps shorten the time for the new crown nucleic acid to turn negative.
In this regard, WHO experts believe that the data submitted by China is indeed enough for the meeting to make a "cautiously optimistic" judgment: that is, Chinese medicine can play a certain role in preventing the deterioration of mild and moderate covid-19 cases.
The expert group also said that its efficacy in severely ill patients still needs to be evaluated, and recommended that domestic scholars publish the data in international journals for a more detailed discussion.
The Health Bureau looked through the original text of the meeting minutes and found that no conclusive words with a strong tone were used in the relevant discussion results. The minutes also mentioned that all the judgments made at the seminar were based on materials submitted by China. Moreover, the meeting itself is not to make a conclusion on the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine on new crown pneumonia, but to exchange research results and evaluate the "contribution of comprehensive therapies of traditional Chinese medicine in the treatment of new crown pneumonia".
Elisabetsky, chairman of the expert group, said directly during the discussion: The question that needs to be answered at the meeting is "how to improve chinese medicine research in the future".
At the end of the workshop, WHO experts recommended that Chinese scholars continue to optimize current data analysis and improve trial methods to promote more international trials to further investigate the "effectiveness" of these products in other populations.
To explore the value of traditional medicine, countries may consider the use of traditional Chinese medicine
During the workshop, WHO experts took particular note of some of the highlights of the three China reports.
The minutes mentioned that Chinese researchers have noted that traditional Chinese medicine treatment may cause "loss of appetite" in patients with new coronary pneumonia. WHO experts believe that the long-term impact of related treatments on COVID-19 patients is an important topic, but in Western countries, this issue is often overlooked by scholars.
Judging from the entire minutes of the meeting, the attitude of WHO experts to the treatment of COVID-19 in traditional Chinese medicine is positive.
Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, both at home and abroad, traditional Chinese medicine treatment has gained certain recognition. According to the data of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, during the epidemic in Wuhan in 2020, the proportion of traditional Chinese medicine participating in treatment nationwide was as high as 92.41%. A set of research results released by Hubei Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine showed that the clinical cure rate of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine was 30% higher than that of western medicine.
In mid-March 2022, the National Health Commission announced that products such as Lianhua Qingyi Capsules of Ling Pharmaceutical, Xuan Lung Sepsis Granules of Buchang Pharmaceutical, and Huoxiang Zhengqi Oral Liquid of Taiji Group were included in the ninth edition of the "Diagnosis and Treatment Plan for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia". In non-drug therapy, acupuncture methods have also been added to the treatment of patients with mild and ordinary symptoms.
At the press conference on the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic in Shanghai, Fang Min, president of Shuguang Hospital affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and head of the epidemic prevention and control base of traditional Chinese medicine, said that the use rate of traditional Chinese medicine for positive infected people in Shanghai is more than 98%, and "chinese medicine anti-epidemic prescriptions are well received by patients."
This time, after concluding the assessment, WHO experts suggested that Member States could consider applying traditional Chinese medicine to the treatment of COVID-19 in the context of their actual conditions.
At present, limited by the level of economic development of various countries, modern medicine cannot effectively cover all parts of the world. In this case, some traditional treatments can form an effective complement. In fact, using TCM treatment as a sample to explore "how to effectively increase the contribution of traditional medicine in the global epidemic" is one of the goals that WHO wanted to achieve in convening this meeting.
In early March 2022, WHO issued the "International Standard Terminology for Traditional Chinese Medicine", which delineated unified English translation standards for 3415 basic theories, diagnosis and medical evidence, and therapeutic terms of traditional Chinese medicine.
The standardization and internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine has taken another crucial step.
(Image courtesy of Visual China)