The university's dean of the school, Liu Liang told the audience at the seminar on reflections after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) crisis organized by Chinese newspaper, Ta Kong Pao, as he summed up the university's experience in proposing the use of Chinese medicine in as early as March during the anti-SARS period here.

Although the use of Chinese medicine was limited to preventive purposes, and not the actual treatment of the disease particularly at Hong Kong's public hospital system, Hong Kong people have been made more aware of the effective medical properties of Chinese medicine, Liu said.

He added, "Actually since the setting up of the university's anti-SARS committee chaired by the university's vice chancellor NgChing Fai, Baptist university has been able to guide citizens correctly on how to use Chinese medicine properly to deal with SARS and has opened up the possibility of using Chinese medicine to treat SARS."

Liu stressed that the Hong Kong Hospital Authority's convening a meeting with mainland Chinese medicine experts to discuss the use of Chinese medicine on May 30 represented a milestone in promoting dialogue and discourse between Chinese and western medicines. "It was a simple yet meaning process," he said.

At the moment, due to Hong Kong's lack of a mechanism at public hospitals for Chinese and western medicine experts to work together, Chinese medicine is not practiced at the wards of the such hospitals.

Yet Liu still praised the Hong Kong government for having legislated in the past years to better regulate the practice of and research on Chinese medicine. "On this the Hong Kong government has made great achievements," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 26, 2003)