Singapore - A joint venture between Singapore General Hospital and a Shanghai group will provide traditional Chinese medicine to patients in South-East Asia starting next month, organizers said on Saturday. The 2.8-million-Singapore dollar (1.8-million US dollar) centre to be called Ban Zhong Tang, meaning "hall of treasures," is a tie-up between SingHealth and the Shanghai Hospital Development Centre.

The centre will select a team to be based in the city-state.

"We see this as a chance to expand the horizons of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)," The Strait Times quoted Professor Gao Jie Chun as saying.

"It has such a rich tradition and history, but awareness is very low outside China," he noted.

Walk-in patients will be treated by experienced Chinese TCM physicians, said Charity Wai, head of the project on the Singapore side. The treatment herbs will be shipped directly from China, Wai said.

As part of the venture, the Shanghai and Singapore hospital practitioners will conduct research projects to determine if Chinese traditions can help conditions that sometimes confound Western medical science in the areas of blood disorders, diabetes and cancer.

"There are obviously very different philosophies working here," Professor Ng Han Seong, chairman of the hospital's medical board, told the newspaper.

"In medical practice we treat what is wrong, but in TCM, there is emphasis on harmony and a holistic approach."