Impact of acupuncture

It was Qiao Min, an acupuncturist who was a member of the 19th Chinese medical team that had arrived in Ethiopia 10 months ago as part of a Sino-ethiopian medical cooperation agreement to provide free medical services, including traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatments.

The septuagenarian couldn’t praise her enough. “This Chinese acupuncturist treated me with those needles in a way I have never been treated,” he said. “For years, I could not sit down or bend down to get something from the floor due to sciatica. I hadn’t been able to sleep properly for 14 years because of the racking pain. But after getting the first acupuncture treatment, I had respite from pain the whole night.”

TCM and acupuncture are held in high regard in Ethiopia, with TCM practitioners dubbed “magic doctors” and the acupuncture needles “the needles of god.” Patients from the local community would like to be treated with TCM because of its reputation for providing fast relief from pain and having no side effects, unlike Western medicine.

However, what has prevented TCM, especially acupuncture, from being widely used in Ethiopia is the lack of practitioners, which has made the treatment expensive and not easily available.

“Due to acupuncture being very expensive and almost inaccessible in Ethiopia, most people who need the treatment usually never get the chance to do so, particularly in a town like Bishoftu. So it is a great opportunity to find the Chinese team here at the hospital, helping a lot of people for free,” said Dessalegn Bayisa, General Manager of BGH.

There were large queues of patients since the arrival of