A Tibetan graduate student is scheduled to lecture on Tibetan medicine at Harvard University for three months starting from early September.

Yangga is the first graduate student trained in Tibet to lecture in the United States.

"In talks with overseas experts on Tibetan medicine, I found some are not equal to Tibetan secondary school students in terms of Tibetan medicine. I wish to help more people in other parts of the world to understand Tibetan medicine through academic exchanges," Yangga said.

Yangga is renowned at Harvard since comparing notes with a Harvard professor at an international symposium on Tibetan medicine held in Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, in 2000. The Tibetan briefed the American on the centuries-old medicine and its supernatural functions, which aroused the professor's interest.

Yangga said, "I'll focus on the development of Tibetan medicine. As all the materials I am going to quote are obscure ancient terms, I have to translate them into English."

After studying Tibetan medicine at the Tibet College of Tibetan Medicine for more than 16 years, Yangga has a good command of its theory and clinical practice.

His greatest wish is to develop Tibetan medicine for future generations. His forthcoming visit to the United States will serve that aim.

Tibetan medicine was developed over a long period by the Tibetan people based on their experiences in life and production, absorbing the strong points of traditional Chinese medicine and ancient Indian and Arabic medicines.

It has miraculous curative effects on cerebrovascular disease, rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic hepatitis. It is also notably effective against tumors, diabetes, blood diseases, hepatocirrhosis and other diseases which Western medicine is unable to deal with.

However, for thousands of years, the information was kept inside temples and lamaseries in Tibet. Tibetan doctors never categorized the specialties of Tibetan medicine and never established files for patients.

"This unique medical system needs theoretical creation. Only by developing Tibetan medicine, can we harness its great vitality. If it is strictly governed by iron tradition, it will become a kind of antique curiosity," Yangga said, adding the new generation of Tibetan physicians should make Tibetan medicine the property of all countries.

The Tibet College of Tibetan Medicine is the only research and educational base for the study of Tibetan medicine in China. It assembles the elite of Tibetan medicine from across the country.

The college followed time-honored medical traditions and had trained many Tibetan medicine doctors since the 1980s. They were playing a key role in the country's 57 Tibetan medicine hospitals and three research institutes, Yangga said.

Though veteran Tibetan medicine doctors had accumulated rich theoretical and practical experience, they still found it difficult to solve some problems as the way of life in Tibet had changed a lot, Yangga said.

For instance, the preferred food of local residents had expanded from Zamba (roasted qingke barley flour used as the staple food of the Tibetan people), beef, mutton and buttered tea to fresh vegetables and fruit. Consequently, Tibetan medicine should be combined with nutrition to meet the requirements of modern society, he added.

Modern science and technology have saved many aspects of Tibetan medicine from being lost. But, Yangga insisted, the premise of absorbing modern medical theory was to retain the true feature of Tibetan medicine. Undue reliance on Western medicine would reduce Tibetan medicine to nothing.

He is studying ways to integrate public health in the West with Tibetan medicine as he thinks there is something in common between the two.