President of Tianjin University of TCM, a People’s Hero, stayed for victory on Wuhan frontline

On Tuesday, Zhang Boli, 72, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, was granted the national honorary title "People's Hero" for his outstanding contributions to the country's fight against the COVID-19 epidemic.

"This honor was not only given to me as an individual. I share the glory because I am a member of the medical staff who have benefited from TCM," Zhang said.

Zhang arrived in Wuhan as an expert member of the Central Guidance Team in Hubei on Jan 27, the fifth day into the city's lockdown for epidemic control. The city was struggling at the time. "Hospitals were overcrowded with potential risks of cross infections," Zhang said.

To reduce the risks, Zhang proposed the centralized quarantine of suspected and confirmed patients and treated them with TCM. Many of the patients reported relief from symptoms and a sharp drop was witnessed in the number of confirmed cases.

He helped design and set up the only TCM makeshift hospital in Wuhan's Jiangxia district. He and over 300 other doctors formed a TCM medical team. They were stationed at a makeshift hospital using TCM decoctions with other treatments such as massage, acupuncture and physical exercises from Tai Chi and Baduanjin, a traditional aerobics form, to treat COVID-19 patients.

While the hospital was open from Feb 12 to March 10, they treated 564 patients with mild symptoms and none of them saw their health condition deteriorate. What was learned from the experience then spread to other makeshift hospitals and helped reduce the proportion of mild cases developing into severe cases.

"We have therefore used TCM in 16 makeshift hospitals for isolation treatment of COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, and since then the rate of patients developing severe conditions has been substantially reduced," he said.

With Zhang's pioneering practices, TCM treatment has been given to 90 percent of COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, relieving symptoms, slowing the progression of the disease, reducing mortality and boosting recovery.

On Feb 19, Zhang had gallbladder surgery due to exhaustion and irregular meals, but he refused to withdraw from the frontline and went back to work shortly after the surgery. It was not until April 16 when Zhang returned to Tianjin, after 81 days of hard battle in Wuhan.

On July 24, Zhang returned to Wuhan, which he calls his "second hometown," and gave a keynote speech on fighting the epidemic with TCM. Seeing that the former patients can now live normally, Zhang said happily "Now Wuhan is full of traffic and people; I like this Wuhan."