China: Xinjiang officials urge hospitals to use traditional Uyghur medicine to treat COVID-19

Beijing [China], January 14 (ANI): Western Xinjiang’s top government officials have urged hospitals to start using traditional Uyghur medicine to treat patients amid surging COVID cases in the region, Washington, D.C. based non-profit news service Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.

According to RFA, this comes as a rare acknowledgement of treatment that blends ancient Greco-Roman, Egyptian, Arabian and Indian medicine dating back more than 2,500 years. According to Ma Xingrui, Communist Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, health officials and hospitals in China must take advantage of traditional Chinese and Uyghur treatments as well as Western drugs to fight COVID.

Traditional Uyghur medicine which uses plant-based ingredients treats a wide variety of ailments, including skin disease, urogenital disease, rheumatism, digestive problems and respiratory infections in the form of pills, tablets, tinctures, granules, syrups and liniments.

Zukam Jewhiri, a cold remedy, and Sherbiti Zufa, a syrup, are the traditional Uyghurs medicines used to combat COVID. Health workers who use the medicines report positive results.

A physician at the Aksu City Hospital, Xinjiang, as quoted by RFA, said: “Ethnic medicine in Xinjiang has been showing its advantage [by] contributing to controlling COVID and to the treatment of COVID patients.”.

“We treated severely ill COVID patients by continuously giving them Uyghur medicine for three days, which lowered their fevers. There are cases in which patients recovered from COVID because of Uyghur medicine,” he said.

Xinjiang has more than 60 pharmaceutical companies. These companies generated revenue of 8.8 billion yuan, or about USD 1.3 million, in 2021, a 10.5 per cent increase from the same period the previous year, according to a report by Tengritagh News Network in January 2022.

Many of the products sold by the companies are based on traditional Uyghur medicine which has been incorporated into traditional Chinese medicine. China, however, does not acknowledge it.

According to the RFA, after COVID broke out in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, many drug companies in Xinjiang operated at full capacity to produce traditional Uyghur pills and syrups to treat COVID patients, China Daily reported in February 2020.

Uyghur medical professional Mutellip Emchi said that the government’s strategy to deploy traditional medicine, which incorporates Uyghur medicine, shows that Uyghur treatments are an invaluable medical asset.

“The recent attention the Chinese government has given to investing in and developing traditional medicine is due to being unable to find a cure,” Emchi said, as quoted by RFA.

“China and the international community realized and acknowledged the effectiveness of Uyghur traditional medicine against the COVID virus,” he added.