Ties to the East

VIP Visitors and ties to the East

For a PDF with pictures please click here.

In October 2011 we had some VIP’s from Taiwan’s Chinese Medicine community honouring us with a visit at Avicenna.

Part of the group were President of the National Union of Chinese Medicine Doctors Association and vice superintendent China Medical University Hospital Dr. Mao-Feng Sun,  Prof. Dr. Chang and Dr. Yen from Chan Gung Hospital,Dr. Chen from  the Buddhist charity  and Tzu Chi Hospital, and Dr. Wen-Te Chang from the China Medical University in Taiwan.

They came to Europe and particularly to the UK on a fact-finding mission to get to know the standards of Chinese Medicine in the UK and to establish links with universities for closer collaboration with the Chinese Medical community in the West.

Dr. Wen-Te Chang, who is in charge of pharmacognoscy at China Medical University in Taiwan, commented: “The visit to AVICENNA was the highlight of my trip and the best experience I had in UK.”

We are to establish an internship program for pharmacy students from his program at China Medical University at our dispensary in the near future.

We are also sponsoring our longstanding employee and herb buyer Kerry Carter, aka Jin Feng Zheng, to do an MSc in Pharmacognoscy and modern methods of processing raw herbs at a Chinese Medicine university in China. Even though Kerry is undoubtedly already an expert, having worked with raw Chinese herbs for over 15 years, this is a very complex field that forever throws up new challenges. She will start her course within the next few months and we are very pleased to be supporting this exciting plan.

She has yet to decide whether to study at the Chinese Medical University of Nanning, in Guangxi Province, one of the main traditional herb growing areas of China, or at the Chinese Medical University of Beijing. To make her decision easier, she will shortly be taking a trip to China, where she will also visit some of our herb suppliers and follow new leads. Her main aim is to visit the two schools and discuss cooperation opportunities for Avicenna with their research departments.