By Shen Wen, Member of the National Committee of CPPCC Derived from March 6, 2007, Xinmin Evening News In the government work report, Minister Wen pointed out that “it is necessary to quicken the reform and development of health protection, especially Chinese medicine and national medicine and to make Chinese traditional medicine contribute more on disease prevention and cure”. Chinese medicine is Chinese specific and important health resource. The government suggested putting full prosperity of Chinese medicine into national long-term science and technology development strategy as one of the most important special project.

To prosper Chinese medicine, first of all is to strengthen Chinese medical education, train more both theoretical and practical Chinese medicine specialists and encourage them to work in grass roots by related policy.

Then, to prosper Chinese medicine can be done by enlarging the government investment and support, building up complete Chinese medicine R&D and promoting the Chinese medicine industrialization and modernization. Particularly, in countryside areas without plenty medical resources and good medical security system, Chinese medicine should play a much more important role. A health protection and service system mainly consisting of Chinese medicine combining with western medicine should be set up in the country. The application of rebuild project and extension project for country-level Chinese medicine hospital should be done well. Especially, among all the rebuild work for country-level hospital, infrastructure for Chinese medicine and its pharmacy is very important.

Meanwhile, another work needs to be done is to make more efforts on Chinese medicine specialists training in the country and to start the specialty training to key technicians in country-level Chinese medicine hospital. Also, making policies could be able to encourage qualified Chinese medicine specialists to work in the country. In particular, preferential policies of salary, allowance and public expenditure towards western of China and less development areas will make some efforts to Chinese medicine development as well.