East-West medication at hospitals

Star: BUTTERWORTH: It will be East-meets-West at selected hospitals soon when the Health Ministry introduces a special project to offer traditional medicine and services to complement Western medicine.
Minister Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek said the pilot project would initially involve three local hospitals and Chinese medicine practitioners from universities in China.
“The Cabinet has recently approved the integrative hospital project, which is expected to start in July,” he said.
Under the project, he said Kepala Batas Hospital would tie up with University of Beijing, Putrajaya Hospital with University of Shanghai and Sultan Ismail Hospital in Pandan, Johor with University of Nanjing.
Dr Chua said the traditional medicine practitioners would set up offices at the hospitals.
“My ministry has identified several modules and treatment methods such as acupuncture, massage and wellness programmes to be introduced at these hospitals,” he told reporters after opening the North Malaya Patent Medicine and Herbs Dealers Association’s new office in Jalan Raja Uda here yesterday.
“We will also send our medical team for training courses at the Chinese universities,” he said, adding that the ministry would later look at introducing Indian and Indonesian traditional medicine at local hospitals.
Chua said there were presently many untrained and unqualified individuals who provided traditional medicine services.
“Traditional medicine practitioners in the country must have a certain code of ethics to earn public confidence,” he said.
He said the ministry had so far registered 4,900 Chinese traditional medicine practitioners, 175 Malay traditional medicine practitioners, 69 Indian ones and 1,200 other practitioners offering complementary services such as massage and acupuncture.
On the escalating price of medicine, Dr Chua said the Government could not control the price of every single drug.
Asked about the recent food poisoning cases in Kedah involving children who consumed milk under their schools’ food subsidy programme, Dr Chua said the ministry was still investigating the source of contamination.