Amid drug shortage, Chinese People Turn To Traditional Medicines To Treat Covid

 

Many people are using old-fashioned traditional medicines to treat the aches and pains of the virus as Covid-19 ravages China's enormous population, sickening millions of people and contributing to a prescription scarcity.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, President Xi Jinping has pushed traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and health officials have praised its "vital role" in battling the coronavirus.

TCM has been practised for thousands of years to treat a wide variety of diseases. It includes a variety of therapies such as herbal medicines, massages, acupuncture, and diets.

Few peer-reviewed studies support claims of its usefulness, according to critics, and it is useless in treating true illness.

However, millions of Chinese people utilise it to treat symptoms, frequently in conjunction with western treatment.

After contracting Covid, Beijing consultant Yu Lei, 38, developed a fever. To treat his condition, he brewed a herbal tea with ginger, peony roots, liquorice, jujubes, and cassia twigs, which are similar to Chinese cinnamon.

He told AFP, "In our household, we frequently employ Chinese medicines, and after drinking the brew, my fever vanished.

TCMs, in contrast to Western medications, which "attack the symptoms but rarely the basis of the sickness," allegedly have fewer adverse effects and take longer to regulate the body.

Beijing has asked regional leaders to "publicise effectively and objectively the role and efficacy of TCM brews in the treatment of Covid-19."

Ben Cowling, professor emeritus of epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, told AFP that "we don't know if these treatments are beneficial or not, because they haven't been evaluated in clinical trials."

Although I wouldn't rule out the chance that some of them are dangerous, I also wouldn't rule out the idea that some of them may be useful.

Only chemical drug-based Covid therapies are advised by the World Health Organization. In response to AFP's inquiry regarding TCM, the organisation stated that it recommended nations to "collect trustworthy facts and statistics on traditional medicine practises and products."