Healing traditions go abroad

Mongolian medicine and its healers

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In February last year, a six-member delegation traveled to the United Nations headquarters in New York and attended an international forum organized by the World Health Organization, where its members delivered a speech on the function and role China's TMM has played in the lives of urban and rural residents.

The delegation was led by Ulaan, director of the State-owned Inner Mongolia International Mongolian Hospital that opened in Hohhot in April 2012. It is currently listed among the country's top hospitals, and almost 400,000 patients were treated in 2013, according to Ulaan.

At the UN, executive director of WHO Jacob Kumaresan applauded the delegation for bringing the first traditional Mongolian medicine from China to the UN podium.

Ulaan attributes this chance to good fortune.

"We were invited because WHO specialists visiting Inner Mongolian were dumbfounded when they saw how our physician put together a leg fracture in seconds," she says. "And I used acupuncture to cure a patient's frozen shoulder right under their eyes. It only cost 16 yuan ($2.60)."

Ulaan estimates that the cost is generally 40 to 50 percent lower as a TMM relies more on the doctor's experience than sophisticated medical instruments and expensive drugs.

"There is too much overuse of antibiotics and hormonal medication. We offer alternative, safer solutions," Ulaan says, proudly recalling the thunderous applause at the UN.