Health care workers say they'll look harder

More than 800 medical practitioners from all over the world have vowed to promote co-operation between Eastern and Western medicine at the 10th World Congress of Chinese Medicine held in Santa Clara of Northern California over the weekend.

"In recent years, Chinese medicine has been playing an important role as a supplement to health service in the Western world," Li Zhenji, the former vice-director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, told China Daily in Santa Clara on Sunday.

Li is also the leader of the expert group of Traditional Chinese Medicine Special Project at the National Basic Research program and vice-chairperson and secretary-general of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies.

"More and more Western patients have held an open mind towards Chinese medicine after feeling its 'magic', but it still takes time to educate the Western market to accept Chinese medicine as a scientific theoretical system," he said.

For example, there are still many legal problems needed to be solved if Chinese medicine practitioners want equal social status to Western medicine practitioners in the US, he said.

"By now, acupuncture has developed very well in the US, but it's only a part of the traditional Chinese medicine system," he said.

In order to celebrate the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies' anniversary, more than 300 out of the 800 Chinese medicine practitioners at the conference were from China, including many famous academics and researchers.

"Through the conference, we want more Western people to better know and accept Chinese medicine," said Jeffery Huang, the vice-secretary general of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies, in Santa Clara on Sunday.

By the end of last year, China had exported more than $2.3 billion yuan worth of Chinese medicine to foreign countries, which represented a steady increase in recent years, he said.

Eva Zhang, manager of E-Fong Health Source Products, Inc, said that her Los Angeles-based company set up a factory in Guangzhou.

"We do business with Chinese medicine practitioners in the US. There are more than 10,000 Chinese medicine practitioners in California, and thousands of them are our clients," she said.

"Most of the herb-planting bases are located in China, so the cost is much lower than if the operation was in the US," she said. "Also, the factory in China has been regulated under very strict standards of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices)."

The weekend's Congress also attracted some American graduates who are interested in Chinese Medicine for job opportunities.

"I am an acupuncture student, so I come to check out the conference and see what Chinese medicine companies are here," Emily Klein, a 28-year-old Santa Cruz resident, said.

She used to study Western medicine but decided to dedicate herself to acupuncture as a profession after feeling the magic of it four years ago. "More and more California youths believe it would be a good choice for getting a decent job after graduation," she said.

chenjia@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/23/2013 page2)