July 17 (Xinhua) -- A three-day international symposium on Tibetan medicine closed today in this regional capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in west China.

The meeting, the first one held in the homeland of Tibetan medicine, gathered together over 600 medical workers from at home and abroad as well as government officials. More than 500 academic papers were submitted to the symposium. They have been compiled into a corpus.

The experts discussed research fruits of Tibetan medicine from the aspects of medical history, medical theory, clinical practice, development and production of Tibetan medicines, said Tubdian, head of the Tibetan Regional Health Department, at the closing session today.

Medical experts from the United States, France, India, Britain, Japan and Russia, hailed China's achievements in promoting the development of traditional Tibetan medicine at the symposium. Medical workers from regions densely populated by Tibetans, which include parts of Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces in west China, as well as Tibet, brought a variety of Tibetan medicine to the symposium and put on a small exhibition.

The symposium granted rewards to the authors of the 17 best theses. Chinese experts on Tibetan medicine Qamba Chilai and Cai Jingfeng, and Namkhai Norbu, an Italian authority on Tibetan medicine, were cited at the symposium. The gold medal winner was Coru Cering, head of the Tibetan Medical Institute.

(From China Internet Information Center)