Naysayers might call it voodoo. Skeptics question how it works, feeling much safer to keep it at arm's length. Proponents laud its efficacy, although they can't explain its mysterious ways in scientific language that appeals to Western ears. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), often a complex mixture of herbs and animal products, has found it tough to enter the territory dominated by Western pharmaceuticals, despite its 2,000-year-old strength on its home turf.
But there is a glimmer of hope from this northern Chinese port city.
One drug has dispelled at least a bit of the foreign stereotype that Chinese herbs are basically dietary supplements, by consolidating its position in the African market in just five years.
Fufang Danshen Diwan, a cardiotonic pill totally composed of herbal extracts, is available in some 16 African countries. It is used for the emergency treatment of coronary disease, and sales were 80 million U.S. dollars last year, compared with less than 100,000 U.S. dollars in 2002.
The South African government has added the flagship pill, produced by the Tianjin Tasly Pharmaceutical company, to the list of government designated drugs for medicare services for civil servants.
Our success "may come in part from African people's tradition of using herbal medicines. But the real launching pad is our cutting edge in deciphering the medicine's molecular formula and ensuring the ingredients' uniform quality," said chief executive officer Dai Biao of the Tasly Group (Africa) Ltd, a subsidiary of Tianjin Tasly Pharmaceutical.
With domestic sales of more than 1 billion yuan (about 146 million U.S. dollars) last year, the drug was the first Chinese herbal medicine to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical tests in the United States.
Many Tasly staff here surmised that the reasons for the drug's success include the production and presentation methods, or "modernization," a refrain of Tasly Pharmaceutical president Yan Xijun.
In Tasly's 87 hectare modern Chinese medicine park, out is the tradition of manual production relying on masters to pass on their skills to apprentices. In are digitally-controlled production lines replacing the widely-criticized "subjective and uncertain factors" arising from human interference.
by sunny
