A nationwide appeal has been launched to find a banned traditional Chinese medicine in a bid to save a boy left in a coma after a brutal kidnapping last month.

Three-year-old Qiang Qiang has not regained consciousness since he and his mother were taken hostage by a man in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, on April 29.

Qiang Qiang's mother was driving them home when the man, 27-year-old Zhou Qihua from Hubei Province, hijacked the car.

He ordered her to drive to Shanghai but somehow she managed to escape and alert police while her son was still being held.

Police shot Zhou during the rescue operation and he died on May 1 despite treatment.

Qiang Qiang was rescued but had been badly hurt.

After the appeal, launched by his mother, more than 1,000 people joined in the search for a particular type of traditional Chinese medicine which is believed to be capable of bringing people out of comas.

Doctors say the Angong Bezoar Pill, which was being made 10 years ago by Tongrentang, China's leading traditional Chinese medicine producer, could offer the best hope of recovery for Qiang Qiang.

But because China has banned the use of rare animal products in medicine, and the pill contains real rhinoceros horn imported from Brazil, it was taken off the market a decade ago.

Tongrentang is still making the pill but has substituted the banned ingredient with buffalo horn - and doctors say the effects are not as good.

Seventy-five-year-old Shanghai resident Jiang Feng is one of the thousand people who has come up with the pill, which he bought 16 years ago for his mother, who was suffering from apoplexy.

Jiang, a stroke sufferer himself, says his mother was cured and he is willing to hand over the rest of the pills to the boy despite needing them himself.

"He is more needy than I because he still has a long way to go but life for me is shorter," said Jiang.

"Although we are strangers, I would like to use my limited power to help."

Hotlines were opened in Beijing and Shanghai by local-based media and phone calls have come in from across the country, according to a local newspaper.

"I did not expect that we would receive care and compassion from people all over the country," said Qiang Qiang's mother.

Although Qiang Qiang is still not out of danger, he has shown slight signs of recovery after taking one pill produced 20 years ago.

The Angong Bezoar Pill is reported to have treated Liu Hairuo, a well-known anchor with the Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV, who fell unconscious after a traffic accident in Britain in 2002.

Doctors are pledging to do what they can for Qiang Qiang with a combination of Chinese traditional and Western medicines.

Police have not discovered the motive for the kidnapping.

Source: China Daily