Due recognition

alternative medicine is pass in the West now. But the Vancouver Hospital, the second largest in Canada, has formally recognised alternative therapy by opening a new Tzu Chi Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The institute will soon begin research and treatment programmes into pain, fatigue and chronic illnesses. Conventional researchers and traditional practitioners will devise new methods of assessing effects of herbal remedies.

The institute is the brain-child of Wah Jun Tze, a professor of paediatrics at the University of British Columbia. With a strong backing from his colleagues and the large ethnic-Chinese population in Vancouver, and financial aid from the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation of Taiwan, his idea was soon translated into reality. Presently, a growing number of clinics in Canada are offering homeopathic, and naturopathic treatment as well as massage and traditional Chinese therapies.