NW province to offer free herbal therapy to AIDS sufferers
18/7/2005 11:20
Northwest China's Shaanxi Province has decided to offer free herbal
therapy to 50 AIDS patients and HIV carriers in the province in the coming 12
months.
A document issued by the provincial health department last week said
the move will be part of the province's efforts to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS
with traditional Chinese medicine.
The free treatment, which is expected to
start by the end of July, will hopefully ease pains and enhance immunity for
AIDS patients and provide early intervention to postpone as much as possible the
development of HIV into AIDS, said Yuan Ruihua, deputy director of the
provincial administration of traditional Chinese medicine.
"In the coming
days we'll obtain a clear picture of how the AIDS patients and HIV-carriers are
distributed in the province and solicit volunteers who are willing to get the
therapy," Yuan told Xinhua in an interview.
He said the budget for the
12-month treatment is 250,000 yuan (US$30,000), which is to cover the herbal
therapy and immunity tests for all the 50 volunteers and training of doctors and
nurses who are to provide the therapy.
The provincial health department said
Shaanxi Province reported 75 new HIV/AIDS infections in the first six months of
this year, bringing the province's total number of infections to
357.
Ministry of Health figures say there are 840,000 HIV carriers on the
Chinese mainland, of whom 80,000 are suffering from AIDS.
Traditional Chinese
herbal medicine has proven effective in fighting various viruses and diseases
through enhancing the human immune system, which is the very target of the human
immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
Anti-AIDS herbal medicine has been popular in
many Chinese provinces
and Chinese doctors have been trying to alleviate the
pains of HIV/AIDS sufferers in many other developing countries with traditional
Chinese medicine for nearly 20 years.
A herbal anti-AIDS remedy jointly
developed by Chinese and Thai scientists has been proved effective in 89 percent
of clinical trials in Thailand, according to Thai media reports.
Xinhua News
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