Chinese Doctors Stand in Frontline Against AIDS in Tanzania

Home>>World

Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, November 30, 2002

Chinese Doctors Stand in Frontline Against AIDS in Tanzania

DISCUSSION

CHINESE

SEND TO FRIEND

As usual, Dr. Huang Shijing, chief of the Chinese Medical Team in Tanzania, walked into the Muhimubili Hospital, the largest public one in the capital of Dar es Salaam. He and his colleagues have worked here for nearly two years.

"Nine out of ten patients I meet everyday are the HIV/AIDS sufferers," he said with a smile. "But we have tried to extend their lives and our method proved effective. Some of them even lived as long as ten years."

Dr. Huang, who is in his thirties, got his Degree of Doctor in Beijing, China, and specialized in the treatment of HIV/AIDS through traditional Chinese medicine.

In his beloved field, he had devoted many years in seeking a way to minimize the AIDS virus in patient's blood. Thanks to his enthusiasm and success, he was chosen to act as the head of the medical cooperation project on HIV/AIDS between China and Tanzania.

"When I was in China, I firmly believed that the traditional Chinese medicine, with a long history, can kill the ferocious AIDS virus. My research and work in Tanzania has further firmed the belief," Huang said after he examined one patient.

In 1987, then Tanzanian president Julius K. Nyerere, the founding father of the United Republic of Tanzania, paid a visit to Beijing and was received by Deng Xiaoping.

During the talks, Nyerere asked for help from China to seek a way of battling the HIV/AIDS. Deng suggested that China send doctors to Tanzania to carry out an anti-HIV/AIDS project by using traditional Chinese medicine.

Since then, more than 10 groups of Chinese doctors have worked in Tanzania in the past 15 years.

After years and years of study, Chinese doctors had accumulated more than 800 patient files and found a way to extend the life of HIV/AIDS patients.

Most of the HIV/AIDS patients suffered with other diseases such as TB, tetter, and influenza when they went to hospital. Because the HIV virus caused the patients weak in strength, so they were easy to be effected by some simple diseases which is not easy to be involved by normal persons.

Huang and his colleagues explained that unlike other medical theory, the idea of traditional Chinese medicine is to "face patients, not to face the virus."

It means that Chinese doctors find methods to cure the exterior disease the patients got firstly, on that basis, they use the special Chinese medicine to boost up the strength of the patients and decrease the AIDS virus in the body.

After years of research, Huang said that the team had managed to find an effective way to extend the life of patients. The patients' information showed that some of the AIDS sufferers had lived more than ten years.

"If it considered the time that these patients had been living with AIDS before they came to us, it is quite a long time," Huang said.

"But we had to say that it is still an unsolved lesson to the world scientists to find a drug which can kill the AIDS virus and protect the white blood cell and red blood cell," Huang admitted.

Since 1983, the first AIDS cases were diagnosed in Tanzania, the disease is like an invisible killer haunting over the Tanzanians.

The data from a district of Dar es Salaam, Kagera, one of the most severely affected by HIV/AIDS in Tanzania, indicated that the annual Gross Domestic Product per capita dramatically declined from 268 US dollars to 91 dollars from 1983 to 1994, and to a great extent, the HIV/AIDS is to blame.

In Dr. Huang's Traditional Chinese Medicine Special Clinic, most patients are familiar with these doctors, they come here once and again, get free medicine.

At beginning, some of them doubted the traditional Chinese medicine could produce any positive result in curing the disease, as the medicine, the liquid obtained by cooking grass, leaves, roots and fruits, are really something new to them. But now they go to the clinic frequently, even on time.

Huang and his workmates worried that most of the patients were women, some of them are widows. Men who were generally believed to deliver the HIV virus to women, were reluctant to see the doctor.

"That may cause more danger, men should have courage to admit the disease, and actively cooperate with doctors to save their lives. It is also the way to save the lives of their relatives," Huang stressed.

The official document, released by the Tanzanian government on April 2002, shows that most HIV infections are transmitted through sexual behavior and hence the population groups most severely affected are the sexually active youth and women.

By the end of 2000, over 1.8 million persons in Tanzania were estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS. While it is generally believed that among the total of 32 million Tanzanians, at least one tenth of them are the HIV carriers or the AIDS patients.

Dr. Huang and his colleagues are going on with their research, hoping to offer the pills or drugs which can cure the HIV/AIDS pandemic like curing TB

Questions?Comments? Click here

CPC Willing to Enhance Ties with Tanzanian Ruling Party

Zanzibar Willing to Strengthen Cooperation with China: Karume

President Jiang Hails Traditional Sino-Tanzania Ties

Cabbage Tells Changes of Beijingers' Life ( 12 Messages)

A 'Xiaokang' Society Means Not Merely Money ( 5 Messages)

China Starts Working out Law on Citizen ID Card ( 33 Messages)

Differences between US and NATO Widen: Opinion ( 2 Messages)

Sino-US Relations Improve Despite Neo-realism ( 27 Messages)