A ceremony was held on March 5 in Huong Son district, central Ha Tinh province, to mark the 224th death anniversary of Great physician Hai Thuong Lan Ong Le Huu Trac.

Permanent Vice Chairman of the provincial People’s Committee Nguyen Thien gave a keynote speech on Hai Thuong Lan Ong’s life and professional career as a physician.

During 40 years of research, he had collected additional 305 Vietnamese medical herbs, and over 2,850 remedies for treating various diseases from predecessors, Thien said.

Le Huu Trac was the author of a memorable work on traditional medicine known as “Hai Thuong y tong tam linh”, the encyclopedia of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine. This encyclopedia, which has 22 chapters making up 66 volumes, has become a classic in the field, providing a valuable source of knowledge for later generations of herb-doctors, the Vice Chairman added.

The UNESCO recognised the Great Physician as a world cultural and well-known man for his great contribution to the development of traditional medicine and culture of the world.

For her part, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Xuyen praised the past efforts of herb doctors to inherit, preserve and develop the traditional medicine sector, notably their self-training and mixed uses of traditional medicine and modern drugs.

She hoped the doctors will keep up their good work to improve treatment quality in the future.

During the event, some 69 outstanding individuals in the sector were awarded by the Ministry of Health (MoH) together with the launch of a charitable clinic at Hai Thuong Ecotourism Park.

Earlier, a delegation of the MoH and the province’s leaders paid tribute to and planted memorial trees at Hai Thuong Lan Ong’s grave site and his memorial house.

Hai Thuong Lan Ong Le Huu Trac was born in 1720 in Yen My district, northern Hung Yen province.-VNA