All hospitals use traditional medicines
Ha Noi, March 18 (VNA) -- The Health Ministry is to allocate between 10 and 15 percent of its budget to develop traditional medicines and expand their use in all provincial hospitals within this year.
In all, 76 percent of Viet Nam's provincial hospitals use traditional medicines but just 0.5 to 1.5 percent of the Health Ministry's budget is alloted to them.
The target also includes having about 40 percent of district medical wards establish traditional medicine clinics and access to such treatment provided for at least 30 percent of patients in mountain areas.
Viet Nam boasts almost 4,000 traditional physicians, including 22 professors and 20 doctorate holders while more than 5,000 western medical physicians have been armed with the knowledge of traditional medicines.
The treatment is accepted by 30 percent of patients suffering many diseases and is widely practised in remote rural and mountain areas because of its low costs and the high availability of medicinal herbs.
More than 3,000 herbs and 1,000 animals provide the materials for the traditional medicines.
Traditional physicians compiled more than 40,000 prescriptions and collected 699 relevant historical works helpful to their services.
But Viet Nam has yet to publish a book listing medicinal herbs and the different traditional treatments used by its various peoples.
The science is fading from use among the young and some traditional medicines used by some minority groups are also disappearing.
Viet Nam has cooperated with 35 countries in researching the use of traditional medicines in an efforts to reverse the trends.--VNA
