Combined medical efforts to combat epidemic

As the world tries to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus pneumonia, medical experts confirmed yesterday that traditional Chinese medicine can contribute to the convalescence of patients, especially moderately infected ones.

Yang Zifeng, a professor at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health, told a press conference held yesterday by the Guangdong provincial government that certain herbal therapies have proved to be effective in containing the coronavirus, both in lab experiments and clinical use. He said a number of herbal medicines, including lianhuaqingwen capsules, are known to be capable of curbing the virus and the inflammation it induces.

He cautioned that more clinical tests would be required to verify the effects of traditional Chinese medicine, although results to date represent what he calls “a glimmer of hope.” He said that patients who had been given lianhuaqingwen in addition to regular treatment had their fever cured more quickly than those who had not taken the herbal capsule. With further clinical effort, he said, traditional Chinese medicine could be better combined with Western therapies to help fight the new virus.

His findings were echoed by Zhang Boli, president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He told Xinhua news agency in an interview published yesterday that a combination of Western and traditional Chinese medicines had proved to be more effective in treating coronavirus patients than Western medicine alone. Moderately infected patients treated with both Western and traditional Chinese medicines also were less likely to deteriorate into severe conditions, he observed.

“Chinese or Western: whichever has an advantage in treatment should be given full play,” he said. “They complement each other.”

According to Xinhua, as of Monday, traditional Chinese medicine had been given to about 60,000 confirmed patients nationwide, accounting for 85 percent of the total.

Zhang, also an expert member of the national team guiding the fight against the virus, said he and his colleagues have treated patients not only with herbal therapies, but with acupuncture too. The doctors even taught their patients how to practice traditional Chinese breathing exercises as a way to enhance their immunity.

Zhang Wenhong, director of the department of infectious diseases at Shanghai's Huashan Hospital, once said at a forum that the best doctors are those who prevent people from falling ill in the first place. Indeed, when a patient becomes fatally ill, few medicines, Western or Chinese, can work miracles.

Zhang Boli rightly cautioned, however, that there’s no need for healthy people to take herbal medicine as “prevention.” For healthy people, he explained, the best preventive measures include a balanced mind and good rest.

The initial success of certain traditional Chinese herbal therapies in curbing, if not eliminating, the coronavirus reminds us that everyone can learn how to prevent our immune systems from being weakened by an undesirable lifestyle in the first place.

Time is life. By preventing many moderately infected patients from getting worse, China has won precious time for the world’s scientists to search for better therapies.

As human beings find themselves facing an unprecedented rival in the form of this new coronavirus, doctors and scientists all over the world deserve our heartfelt thanks for their cooperation in curing as many patients as possible.