Chinese herbs offer hope in treating Aids

As Aids sweeps Asian countries, raising fears of an epidemic of African proportions, Chinese doctors believe they may be able to work a miracle with traditional medicines such as ginseng and mulberry bark.

Experts suggest the number of HIV carriers in China will reach 10 million by 2010. But researchers such as Professor Guang Chongfen, director of immunology at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Beijing, say their arts hold the answers in the quest to find a cure for the virus.

Professor Guang's team has been conducting clinical trials in Tanzania since 1989. He says that in the most complete experiment, concluded last year, 14 of 29 Aids patients responded positively to treatment with zhongyan erhao, a compound of eight TCM standards, including ginseng.

Professor Luo Shide, of the Kunming Plant Research Institute, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, claims success for his compound SH drug. After sifting though more than 1000 medicinal herbs, Professor Luo selected the bark of white mulberry root and four other Chinese plants.

"This year we tested SH on 28 patients in Thailand," he says. "Nine showed obvious reductions in viral concentration, while 16 others showed no increase after three months' treatment."

As Third World countries struggle with the cost of Western medicines, Chinese discoveries offer hope of affordable cures.

"There is no vaccine for Aids," says Professor Guang, "and no compound can cure it yet. But Chinese medicines can inhibit the growth of the virus and improve patients' immunity."

The biggest challenge is funding.

"There is so much discrimination in society towards Aids sufferers that people are afraid to admit they have the disease," says Professor Guang.

"This means no one knows exactly how many people have Aids in China, and this influences how much funding the Government gives."

The Government accepts unofficially that there are up to a million cases - and the tally rises more than 30 per cent a year.