A total of 586 senior experts of the traditional Chinese medicine have been chosen to do the work of training 942 medical staff by helping them inherit academic experience of the traditional Chinese medicine, said She Jing, vice-minister of health and director of the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

About 50 to 60 per cent of the subsidies will be used as bonuses to experts for their teaching work.

Most of the senior doctors of traditional Chinese medicine possess their own medical stores and the registration fee for their treatment is rather high.

Their income will certainly be affected by teaching and instructing the junior traditional Chinese medicine students.

To insure the quality of the trainees, strict checks and supervision will be necessary throughout the learning process.

According to She, at least three half-days have to be used for clinic study each week in the following three years.

This is the third time China has launched such expertise teaching and learning programs.

The first started in the early 1990s. After more than 10 years' development and great efforts made by the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Health and the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the second one was pushed forward in the middle of this June and all the people involved in the work took their positions before December 10.

The three government departments have drafted a temporary rule to guarantee the implementation of the work.

According to the rules, tasks and aim of the job were defined as a "high-level, non-credit and clinic compulsory" education of traditional Chinese medicine.

The rule came out on the basis of the experience of the former two times which altogether trained 1,343 medical majors as senior experts of traditional Chinese medicine under the instruction of 1,021 senior experts and most of them are over 70.

(China Daily December 31, 2002)