The suspension of the use of a herbal medicine injection by the Ministry of Health should not be the end of a medical accident, which has already caused three deaths and abnormal reactions in more than 150 patients.

The problematic injection is used to smooth out blood circulation and has been used for years. But with its application to a wider range of vascular diseases, abnormal reactions have been reported frequently, and deaths were reported late last month.

This is not the first time that an injection made of medicinal herbs has caused deaths.

Another injection abstracted from a medicinal herb that was used for infections also led to several deaths and abnormal reactions in many users two years ago.

With repeated fatal accidents involving traditional medicine injections, there is a debate on whether injections from extraction of medicinal herbs should be developed. Some maintain that medicinal herbs should be taken orally rather than being made into injections.

Yes, we have a history of several thousand years of taking oral concoction of TCM. And TCM boasts thousands of prescriptions with a combination of different herbs to treat different diseases. Modern drug manufacturing technology has made medicinal herbs into pills and tablets, which are much easier for patients to take.

It represents progress for TCM to have medicinal herbs processed into injections, which should have had better effects on patients. Theoretically speaking, if a recipe of herbal medicine is effective in treating a particular disease, the injection made from it should function even more effectively.

Yet, the level of technology that turns herbal medicine into an injection makes the difference. Is the technology advanced enough to make the distilled injection pure without other harmful elements? Is the method for a chemical analysis accurate enough to make sure that the exact substance we need for treating a particular disease can be identified?

Preliminary investigations in Yunnan province where the deaths occurred say that the injections that have caused deaths and abnormal reactions might have been contaminated. Further investigations need to be organized by the Ministry of Health and other State departments to find out the real culprit.

This is important because the healthy development of TCM cannot afford repeated suspensions of herbal medicine injections without getting to know where exactly the problem lies.

If the injection is found to be contaminated, we need to know exactly how and in which stage of the manufacturing process the contamination occurred. Then the manufacturer will be able to fix the problem. If the technology is proved to be not advanced enough, we also have reason to know exactly what shortcomings or insufficiency researchers need to overcome.

TCM needs breakthroughs in further demonstrating its unique advantage in conquering hard and chronic diseases.

The most recent fatal accidents should be a lesson that more efforts are needed in scientific research on how traditional herbal medicines can be manufactured in a scientific and safe manner.

(China Daily October 14, 2008)