AIDS (acquired immunity deficiency syndrome) is caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infecting the human body. Forty million people in the whole world have been infected by HIV (More than twenty-three million people have died.) Ninety per cent of the infected people are in the developing countries. In Africa, especially in regions south of Sahara, as many as twenty-nine million people have been infected by the virus. There, the work of prevention and treatment of AIDS is most serious and is in a critical situation. The continent second to Africa in the appalling number of persons infected by HIV is Asia. In Asia, China occupies the 4th place on a scale that measures the degree of seriousness of the AIDS epidemic, and it is there the epidemic is in the stage of rapid increase in vehemence. Owing to the widespread use of effective testing and determination techniques, more and more people have newly been discovered to be victims of the virus and put in the ranks of AIDS patients. To fight the disease AIDS has become an important task of the country. It is necessary to point out here that the treatment of AIDS has made revolutionary progress on the globe in the past twenty years through the joint efforts of all nations of the world, but there are still a number of problems far from being solved. Therefore, the traditional Chinese medical science and traditional Chinese medicines, being unique in the world, are faced with new opportunities and challenges.
Early in the mid-80s of last century, AIDS became rampant on the African continent. Tanzania was one of the badly hit disaster areas. The tremendous number of deaths caused by AIDS made precarious the economic development of the region and endangered the very existence of the nation. During a visit to China in 1987, the president of Tanzania expressed the hope that the Chinese government would send experts in traditional Chinese medical science and medicines to help Tanzania cope with the problem of AIDS. An agreement was signed with a hospital in Tanzania, by which the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine was obligated to send, under the direction of the Supervisory Bureau of Traditional Chinese Medicine of China, to Dar es Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania, a number of experts in traditional Chinese medicine to cooperate with Tanzanian medical personnel in evolving a program for treatment of AIDS patients by means of traditional Chinese medicine. More than fifty scholars of traditional Chinese medicine went to Dar es Salaam for the performance of this task. They treated the Tanzanians who had been infected by HIV and worked for them with so much love and devotion that quite a few of their patients were moved to tears.
Members of the expert team of the Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine lived and worked in very difficult conditions, but they bore the hardships without a murmur. They achieved remarkable success in treating Tanzanian patients who had been infected by HIV---more than ten thousand in number---and who pinned their hope of recovery on traditional Chinese medicine. The hope and trust of the Tanzanians spurred the team members on. They immersed themselves in clinical work and experimentations. The result was exhilarating. The special features of the AIDS epidemic and its governing laws of development came to be mastered, and more than a hundred dissertations were published. As to the question of how to endeavour to cure the disease itself, it was tackled by falling back upon and developing further the classical methods of traditional Chinese medicine. Explorations were made into the achievements of treating AIDS by relieving internal heat with an eye to detoxification; supplementing energy with the help of hematic tonics; treating asthenia and functional deterioration of the organs; strengthening the spleen and the kidneys; invigorating blood circulation and eliminating stasis and swelling; and replenishing vitality and filling up deficiencies. A score of prescriptions for fighting AIDS were successfully developed as a result of individual and collective research.