CHINA HEALTH SCIENCES NEWSLETTER
Vol. 4 , No. 11 - June 25, 2003
TOPICS THIS ISSUE:
- Zuellig Pharma's Entering Chinese Market
- New Hospital for Rich Mainlanders
- Isolation, steroids and herbs were prescription for SARS in Guangdong
- China to introduce new regulation to tackle medical waste
LEHMAN, LEE & XU OPENS SHENZHEN OFFICE Lehman, Lee & Xu is pleased to announce the opening of its new office in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province. Please direct all inquiries to attorney Zdravko Jelic at | |
Zuellig Pharma's Entering Chinese Market
After a long waiting period of six months since China's open its drug distribution market to the world in May 2003, Zuellig-Xinxing Medicine Co. Ltd., joint venture company between Zuellig Pharmaceutical Corp. (Zuellig Pharmaceutical) and China Xinxing Medicine Corp., has finally incorporated recently.
The new company, with a total investment of RMB 120 million, is a 30-year joint venture between Xinxing and Zuellig at 51%: 49%. Some domestic medicine distributors, doubting foreign capitals' adaptability in China, reacted very calmly on Zuellig's entering Chinese market.
Beijing Fengkecheng Medicines Co. Ltd. pointed out that it is hard to tell whether overseas enterprises would perform well in a short time because they would have to cope with an irregular drug circulation market in China. It expects that domestic drug retailers will constantly encounter obstacles of various kinds set by local governments while trying trans-regional franchised distributions. Overseas investors in drug retailing will have to face the same problems as the domestic distributors do.
On the other hand, advanced management brought in by foreign enterprises and brief circulation flow will absolutely result in a price drop thanks to cost reduction, which may offend certain parties in existing market. Overseas investors, therefore, is likely to receive hostile treatment by some suppliers.
(Source: Sino-cast China Business Daily News)
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New Hospital for Rich Mainlanders
Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University will set up a joint venture hospital in the capital catering to the growing number of wealthy mainlanders. Yu Quan Hospital, affiliated with Tsinghua University's school of medicine, will be redeveloped into a 300-bed unit specialising in gynaecology and obstetrics.
It will also have emergency and rehabilitation centres. Financing for the four to five-year project will come from foreign direct investment, co-operation with overseas insurance firms and institutional investors. The hospital is expected to have international-standard management and services, the weakest part of the mainland medical system. Medical equipment would be imported from Europe and the United States.
If the project went smoothly, the hospital might franchise its business in other mainland cities. Several investors from the United States, Europe and Japan had shown interest in the project.
Last year, total medical revenue in China increased 17 per cent, whereas revenue from gynaecology and obstetrics services surged 65 per cent. Since the late 1990s, more than 60 Sino-foreign hospitals or special medical centres have been built in China, where foreign investors can hold up to 70 per cent of a joint venture hospital.
(Source: The Standard)
Isolation, steroids and herbs were prescription for SARS in Guangdong
A hefty dose of steroids, some herbs and a whole lot of isolation was the recipe for success in the fight against SARS for southern China's Guangdong province, where the respiratory virus is thought to have originated last November. Despite reporting more than 1,500 infections in the province, Guangdong contained Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome with a 3.8 percent mortality rate -- the lowest in the world, in which nearly 800 people died from more than 8,500 infections.
SARS is caused by a coronavirus much what produces the common cold. Its droplet transmission makes it highly contagious as does its ability to duplicate within the body. Patients who died of SARS usually succumbed to hypoxia, or oxygen starvation, because they were unable to get enough air circulating through their swollen lungs. It was discovered that such inflammation could be curbed with corticosteroids, which allowed oxygen to move beyond the virus barrier and reach the oxygen-needing red cells.
But it was the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, into treatment regimens that produced the most success for the researchers -- something about which the Western-trained doctors were initially skeptical. "TCM is a good method, a good therapy for all diseases, not just SARS," said Doctor Li Yiming, the director of the Intensive Care Unit at GRID. Herbs such as balankan and yu-shing chao helped to cool body temperature, while huang-lin and the wild chrysanthemum assisted in reducing the painful swelling of lung tissues.
The doctors in Guangdong also created a diagnostic test able to detect antibodies for SARS in recovered or recovering patients, which could eventually lead to the development of a vaccine. The IgG gammaglobulin test determines whether the body is producing the antibodies -- the cells that help boost the immune system in response to a pathogen or virus -- or whether a patient is suffering from another illness.
(Source: Agence France Presse)
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The State Council is devising a new regulation to better protect public health by tracking medical waste from cradle to grave. The State Council is devising the regulation in the wake of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis, which highlighted waste disposal problems, according to the Council.
Experts have indicated that improper treatment of medical waste, which is different from household garbage, may lead to pollution of the air, water and soil, and eventually jeopardize the health of every single person. Disposal of medical garbage is now governed only by documents of instructions from the Ministry of Health, instead of a national law or administrative regulations, which has more legal force. An administrative regulation is unusually a prelude to the drafting of a law.
