Agreement to boost TCM-western medicine co-op

BOLOGNA, Italy - A Declaration of Friendship between the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) was inked on Friday in Italy's Bologna to foster future cooperation.

Former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China Xu Jialu and former president of the EU Commission and former Italy's Prime Minister Romano Prodi signed the agreement during a conference organized to promote mutual understanding between the Chinese and Western medical traditions.

Some 150 Chinese and European experts in the fields of both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine met for the two-day "Dialogue on Human Health between Traditional Chinese Medicine Culture and Western Medicine" that kicked off on Thursday in Bologna University.

In his keynote speech, EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy John Dalli said Europe will invest more resources in prevention medicine, which opens the way to future cooperation between the two medical traditions.

"The two cultures already share a notable common ground and I am convinced they can learn a lot from each other," he said, wishing the holistic approach of the Chinese medicine will further enrich the European concept of wellness.

The best way for TCM to foster mutual understanding is promoting both its millenary inheritance and innovation, Cao Hongxin, director of planning and finance department of China's State Administration of TCM, observed.

"The goal of Bologna's Dialogue was to integrate TCM and WM cultures to improve human health," he stressed.

In fact, starting a cultural dialogue between the two medicines that have ignored each other for a long time was an "extremely important" achievement, said Sergio Stefoni, dean of the faculty of medicine and surgery of Bologna University which hosted the event.

"Every field of human life should be faced in four steps: think over things, exchange opinions, encode and finally implement. The Bologna conference brought the dialogue between the TCM and WM through the first two steps," he told Xinhua.

The relational approach to human health typical of the TCM can provide a complementation to Western medicine for the benefit of mankind, he added.