Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Uncategorized

Description: Public health emergencies (PHEs) are extraordinary events that are determined to constitute public health risks to other states through the international spread of disease and that potentially require a coordinated international response. Acute infectious diseases are among the most common PHEs. In China, Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has a long history of treating acute infections such as smallpox, plague, scarlet fever, cholera, typhoid fever, and malaria. Given the occurrence and epidemics of infectious diseases across different periods, valuable experience has been accumulated in the use of CHM to fight against infectious diseases, which was often documented in classical literature and monographs. In modern China, CHM continues to be applied to a wide range of emergent infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndromes (SARS), H1N1 influenza, and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). And there are many clinical trials and systematic reviews of CHM that have been published. However, there has been no comprehensive study describing the current status of the treatment of acute infectious diseases with CHM in the manner of critical appraisal. Therefore, we conducted this study to provide an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) of the treatment of infectious diseases with CHM that could serve as a reference for decision-making in this field.