Welcome to the Website of CTMI

The monastery known as Chagpori was the first official medical college in Tibet. It was established in accordance with the explicit wish of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in 1696 and was destroyed by the Chinese occupying forces in 1959.

These pages will explain what Chagpori was, and has become, and how the late Dr. Trogawa Rinpoche, one of very few surviving doctors who had been trained in its system, worked for much of his life to see the lineage continued through re-establishing Chagpori in exile.

In 1992 with the blessings of HH the Dalai Lama, the Chagpori Tibetan Medical Institute (CTMI) was inaugurated at Darjeeling, India, in commemoration of Chagpori, Lhasa, Tibet.

Since that time, thirty-one doctors, known as amchis in Tibetan, have graduated and there are currently twenty-three students enrolled. Through the work of these young people, who come from all over the Himalayan region, the unique tradition of medicine, with its particular knowledge of herbs survives.

Many people and organisations have given help in the form of funds and support to CTMI over the years, but much more is needed to provide a really sound foundation for continuing growth in the future. Through these pages we hope to inform you of our projects and we hope that you will want to help us make the Chagpori medical tradition flourish again.