China will hold the 6th World Congress on Mountain Medicine and High Altitude Physiology in Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province, and Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, from Aug.12-19.

The congress will be hosted by the International Society for Mountain Medicine (ISMM), the Chinese Society of High Altitude Medicine and the public health bureaus of Tibet and Qinghai Province.

Some 400 specialists from 21 countries, including Japan, Peru, the United States and Canada, will attend the congress, which will first be convened in Xining from Aug. 12-15 and then be moved to Lhasa from Aug.16-19.

Participants will exchange views on topics ranging from chronic exposure to hypoxia, adaptation of humans to hypoxia, hypoxia and the brain, traditional Chinese and Tibetan medicines, high altitude animals, acute and chronic altitutde illness, working at altitude and the effect of altitutde on common medical conditions.

The 5th annual meeting for Chinese High Altitude Medicine will be held simultaneously.

The mortality rate of patients with high altitude sickness in Tibet has decreased from 4.95 percent in 1985 to 0.64 percent last year thanks to progress made in mountain medicine research. And there have been no reported deaths from highland pulmonary edema in the past five years, said information from the Tibet regional bureau of public health.
 
(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2004)