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."
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