Traditional Tibetan medicine has developed steadily in recent years.

About 22 medical enterprises have been set up in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, with total annual sales of 270 million yuan (US$32.5 million), according to a report from China Radio International.

Scientific research on Tibetan medicine has also made breakthroughs, with about 30 topics listed as key to the national interest.

Tibetan medicine has a history spanning more than 2,000 years, drawing on traditional Chinese medicine and ancient Indian and Arabic medicine. It boasts solid theory and sound clinical experience. Modern research is proving that the medicines have unusual and effective pharmaceutical properties.

"The outside world does not know that Tibetan medicine revealed the mystery of human embryology as early as the 12th century," said Qamba Chilai, a noted Tibetan medicine expert.

According to Renwang, deputy director of the Beijing Tibetan Medicine Hospital and a noted expert in heart and blood diseases, the medicine is made from medicinal herbs grown in areas at high elevation, with wide variations in daily temperature and strong sunlight.

"It is good for digestive, heart and blood diseases, and problems in the immune system," he said. In the highly frigid area above 3,800 metres, there are more than 2,000 species of plant, 159 types of animal, and some 80 different minerals, which can be used to make Tibetan medicine.

During the on-going 6th World Congress on Mountain Medicine and High Altitude Physiology held in Lhasa, Tibetan medicine is also among the topics keenly discussed by participants, most of whom are specialists from 21 countries, including Japan, Peru, the United States and Canada.

The conference was first held in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, between August 12-15, and is moving to Lhasa from August 16-19.

Apart from Tibetan medicine, participants will exchange views on topics ranging from chronic exposure to hypoxia, adaptation of humans to hypoxia, hypoxia and the brain, and traditional Chinese medicine.

The congress is hosted by the International Society for Mountain Medicine (ISMM), the Chinese Society of High Altitude Medicine and the public health bureaux of Tibet and Qinghai Province.

(China Daily 08/18/2004 page5)