Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) seems a very sensitive subject to touch upon, so straight off the bat I have to say I have nothing against it.

In fact, I must have tried most of it. Acupuncture, cupping, herbal teas, therapeutical massages, even herbal medicine rice liquor, you name it. It has not made much impact on my health but I do know of people it has greatly helped when nothing else seemed to work.

However, I do take issue with some of the language used to place TCM not as a healthy alternative treatment, but as a ‘healthier’ Eastern counterpart to ‘Western’ medicine, whatever that is.

The concept of ‘Western medicine’ itself is hard to comprehend and is sometimes used as a synonym for pharmaceutical or dare I say medical treatment defined through scientific experimentation. 

For some reason, in recent years the dichotomy of Western vs Eastern medicine has become a matter propped up by Chinese authorities eager to promote TCM as a more ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ form of medicine, grounded in millennial of experience and less harmful than ‘chemical Western’ medicine.

I do notice that some Macau residents tend to recur to Chinese medicine first if they develop light symptoms for an ailment, but will recur to ‘Western’ medicine if their medical issues are more serious.

Since there is no more serious health issue in our times as the novel coronavirus, I have seen a general rush to local pharmacies but not to your local Chinese medicine practitioner looking to stock up in herbal pills for emergencies.

However, I’ve seen many attempts, even use the current dire international health circumstances, for Chinese authorities to look to prop up TCM as a possible miracle cure for Covid-19. 

In a February article the Chinese news agency offered the following interesting statements:

“TCM has never missed a single fight against epidemics throughout Chinese history. TCM classics have provided sufficient evidence of how TCM cured epidemic diseases such as smallpox over the past several thousand years”.

“The 2003 SARS fight was a recent example. TCM offered timely and effective solutions for the treatment and recuperation of SARS patients.”

In another article by Xinhua in March, TCM is said to be gaining popularity in the African continent as it proves effective in treating coronavirus patients, where it is stated that since no specific antiviral treatment has been developed for Covid-19, TCM had proven effective in the Chinese fight against the virus, and therefore could be used to treat patients in Tanzania and Namibia.

The thing is, in most of these articles, it is mentioned that TCM has proven effective when used in conjunction with antiviral medication, but I have still to see a case where it has successfully treated a serious pulmonary infection by itself.

In an interview with Lusa, Professor Yonghua Zhao from the University of Macau Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences – the only medicine department in the university by the way – stated that the Macau government has so far not given any indications concerning the use of Chinese medicine for the treatment of Covid-19. 

I can say I must have seen almost all daily health services press conferences for the last three months I don’t remember once hearing a mention on which TCM compounds are being used on their treatments. There have been mentions of HIV and anti-viral medications used, but have not heard much TCM use.

I’m not saying TCM can’t offer relief for some health ailments or am trying to take value from its practitioners but one thing is to consider traditional practices a healthy complement to ‘scientifically proven’ treatments and another is putting them on the same level or even above, sometimes only as a kind of patriotic pride on ancient local traditions.

Many countries all over the world have traditional treatments passed from centuries as effective medical cures but if a government started promoting them to other nations out of patriotism it would be considered strange, to say the least.

So let me scale this back to a local example. We have a state of the art Guangdong-Macao TCM Technology Industrial Park Development right next door in Hengqin.

It occupies over 500,000 square meters and is a joint investment initiated in 2011 by ‘Zhuhai Dahengqin Investment Ltd.’ and local public company ‘Macau Investment and Development Ltd.’.

The project included an investment by local authorities of some MOP4 billion (US$501 million), an investment even criticized by the Legislative Assembly Follow-up Committee on Public Finances last year.

However, we only have one public hospital in Macau and the future Cotai hospital will likely not even be finished by 2023 and cost more than MOP10 billion.

I hope the products made in the TCM park in Hengqin have been helpful fighting the Covid-19 pandemic but I would sleep better at night if the same investment had been made to boost local health treatment capacity.

Thanks to the great effort of local ‘Western’ medicine practicioners the pandemic has not taken had taken a real hold in the city, but what if it had taken hold and local community outbreaks were recorded?

Then maybe 500,000 square meters for TCM research would have better use as a ventilator factory or containment centre.

MNA Editor-in-Chief