being the only city in china that has been tasked to pilot traditional chinese medicine (tcm) reform, shenzhen plans to upgrade another tcm hospital in the city to be a top-level one and select 30 established tcm doctors this year to promote the use of time-honored chinese cures.
shenzhen won national approval to pilot tcm reform in december, aiming to increase its tcm hospital beds to 3.3 per 10,000 permanent residents, and the proportion of tcm doctors to 3.4 per 10,000 permanent residents by 2020.
the city, which already has three top-class grade-a tcm hospitals, will hopefully upgrade shenzhen longgang district tcm hospital to join the top ranks this year, luo lexuan, director of the city's health commission, said at a ceremony saturday to mark the kickoff of the pilot project.
the current top-ranking tcm hospitals in the city are shenzhen traditional chinese medicine hospital, shenzhen pingle orthopedic hospital and guangzhou university of chinese medicine shenzhen hospital.
to support the sector's talent training, the city is working on a life health engineering college established in longgang district with the support of australia's rmit university, a tcm innovation project in bao'an district and another tcm base under construction in longgang.
the city will also host a tcm doctor selection competition 12 years after the same competition was held, and 30 of the best tcm doctors in the city will be awarded.
"our goal is to ensure sufficiently supportive policies that encourage talent training, wider use of tcm and to support research," said luo.
the health commission said that it is also planning to encourage tcm hospitals to set up hospital groups, push for package charges for tcm treatment and bring in more established tcm doctors from elsewhere.
shenzhen had 690 tcm service providers by the end of 2016, making up 17.6 percent of the total and rising 22.56 percent from a year ago. among them, nine were hospitals, five of which were public.
nearly 2,800 tcm doctors were working in the city, accounting for 9.4 percent of the total and a rise of 3.1 percent from a year ago. tcm hospital beds totaled 3,048 at the end of last year, which accounted for 7.6 percent of the city's total.
