New Year's Message

2020 is an extraordinary year. The century epidemic situation has added up to a century of changes, and the world has entered a period of turbulence and change. "Only with its difficulty, are more courageous and fortitude demonstrated; Only by sincerely carrying out, can it be extremely precious." For the help of life, Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) has gone retrograde and taken up the important task bravely and proved itself with the practical curative effects and real data.

This year, the inheritance, innovation and development of TCM took a solid step forward, contributing the wisdom and strength of TCM to the prevention and control of COVID-19, the construction of a healthy China and the economic and social development.

A grass changes the world, a silver needle connects China and the West, and a wisp of medicine fragrance spans the ancient and modern times. TCM is a major feature and bright spot in China's fight against COVID-19. It gave full play to the unique advantages of TCM in syndrome differentiation and multi-targets intervention, and had explored the formation of a systematic scheme featuring TCM and integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine treatment. It has become a vivid practice of TCM inheritance and innovation.

Among them, the "three medicines and three prescriptions" have definite curative effects and have played an important role in the treatment process. The People's Hero ZHANG Boli concluded that TCM intervened early, and participated in the whole process of fighting COVID-19, strict isolation and widespread use of Chinese medicines had effectively blocked the spread of the epidemic. During the epidemic, the first shelter hospital with TCM as its main treatment was put into application, which effectively reduce the proportion from mild to severe. Researches showed that the comprehensive intervention effects with TCM was significantly increased than that without comprehensive intervention with TCM.

In the past year, TCM has achieved remarkably in serving the national strategy and economic and social development, and the 13th Five-Year Plan has been successfully concluded. We will promote the healthy poverty alleviation, industrial poverty alleviation and designated poverty alleviation with TCM as a whole. We will continue to promote the effective connection between overall poverty alleviation and rural revitalization.We will continue to promote counterpart assistance from tertiary hospitals, the improvement of service capacity in poor counties, the construction of grass-roots TCM halls" of three districts and three states" for deep poverty. We will make the construction of county medical centers for TCM to achieve "full coverage".TCM has achieved remarkable results in helping poverty alleviation.

In such an environment, as a professional journal in the field of integrated traditional Chinese and Western medicine, World Journal of Integrated traditional and western Medicine (WJIM) is deeply responsible.Our responsibility lies not only in transmitting the achievements and real information of the integration of TCM and Western medicine in clinical practice and scientific research, but also in promoting the wisdom and strength of TCM beneficial to the human health. In the past year, the journal has reported a large number of papers on the integration of TCM and Western medicine, such as basic theoretical research, clinical efficacy,systematic review and Meta-analysis to contribute to fighting the epidemic by the integration of TCM and Western medicine.

"We are not afraid of floating clouds to cover our eyes, the road through wind and rain is wider." In 2021, we will solemnly celebrate the 100th birthday of the Communist Party of China, realize the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan and embark on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way. Although there is still great uncertainty in the external environment, we should clearly realize that the strategic opportunity period for the cause of TCM has come. At the intersection of the "Two Hundred Years",we must give full play to the unique advantages of TCM in disease prevention and treatment, promote the complementary and coordinated development of TCM and Western medicine, better serve the health and wellbeing of the people, and meet the people's needs for a better life.

We will continue to face all future challenges with a full posture, optimistic attitude and positive state, and move forward courageously on the road of promoting the internationalization of TCM.