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subject: Oriental Doctors Lament About High Costs, Safety Doubts [print this page]


Oriental Doctors Lament About High Costs, Safety Doubts

Oriental Doctors Lament About High Costs, Safety Doubts

The number of oriental doctors and clinics rapidly growing in multiples amid the high costs and skepticism on Chinese treatments has caused a negative impact towards practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.For the past 10 years, the number of oriental medicine practitioners doubled from 8,845 to in the year 2000 to 16,038 this year.Although most countries have already started to recover after the onslaught of the financial crisis in 2008, the oriental medical industry has suffered a lot due to the above mentioned reasons.Take for instance this one oriental clinic that have been operating for the past six years in Gangnam, it had no choice but to close down because of waning demand for oriental treatments considering the cost and questions of safety hounding the industry. Acupuncture and other oriental treatments would usually cost a patient around 6,000 won, which is deemed too expensive as compared to physical therapy with orthopedics that would only cost 1,500 won, which already covers for the insurance.Back in 2005, more and more people feared about the safety of traditional Chinese herbs when news broke out that there were medicinal herbs that failed to meet the standards of a mandated regulation, released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, on the metal content of medicinal herbs.A 46-year old woman said they are being anxious about oriental herbs because of reports circulating that most of these herbs are from China and most, if not all of it do not go through the proper inspection before these herbs are being manufactured into medicines.The lack of government certification on the safety of medicinal herbs made it even harder for oriental medical practitioners to cope with competition amid the weakening demand for their services, this according to the President of the Association of Korean Oriental Medicine Kim Jeong-gon.Moreover, oriental doctors also lament about medicinal supplements that are readily available everywhere, even without a prescription, such as the glucosamine and red ginseng extract, which were before only availed through a prescription from an oriental physician.Over half a decade ago, Inbo Oriental Clinic head doctor Oh Su-seok said most parents would let their children take medicines that contain deer antlers. Daily prescriptions then for the deer antler medicines would go beyond 40 per day.However, today having one or two orders of the same medicine would already be considered lucky, laments Oh. The demand for herbal medicines drastically dropped in trickles when the red ginseng extract started gaining ground in the market.Today, among all traditional oriental treatments, only acupuncture has remained afloat owing to its increasing popularity within the western medical society. Oriental clinics nowadays depend largely on their revenues from acupuncture treatments, which cover around 80 percent of their total revenues.




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