Experts: TCM can help to fight AIDS

BEIJING - Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has helped 17,000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China since 2004, experts said on Wednesday.

"TCM performs as an effective supplement to Western therapy in terms of alleviating patients' symptoms, including fever, cough, asthenia and diarrhea, thus making life easier for them," said Wang Jian, deputy director of the TCM Center for AIDS Prevention and Treatment with the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

China started to give AIDS patients free TCM therapy in a pilot project carried out among 2,300 patients in five provinces in 2004.