India to promote homeopathy for mother, child health

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/133241.html

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=32445

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

There are reports that India will promote homeopathy for bettering mother and child health in areas like anaemia, asthma and diarrhea. 'Homeopathy is used by many people in India but the usage is very patchy. Through a concerted campaign, we are going to promote homeopathy across the country, especially for mother and child health promotion,' joint secretary health V. Samuels said. Under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the government has decided to promote this form of medicine at the national, state and district level. 'All the hospitals and homeopathy practitioners will be brought under a network to facilitate the success of the program,' Samuels said at a function.
Speaking at the Valedictory Session of the National Campaign on Homoeopathy – Workshop for Healthy Mother and Happy Child, the Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare, Dr. Anbumani Ramadoss said today, that these national campaigns being launched by the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH) will be serving a very useful purpose of focusing attention on the urgent need to integrate the Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy with mainstream health care in the country. He further noted that the integration of AYUSH services with mainstream health care has long been the stated policy of the Government, but practical integration has not really taken place in most parts of the country, and that, by focusing on specific AYUSH interventions for common health and disease conditions, these national campaigns will generate more enthusiasm among health administrators for integrating Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy with mainstream health care in the country.

It is a common knowledge that Homeopathy is unsupported by modern scientific research. The most ‘potent’ medicines are pure distilled water with not a single molecule of medicine even in millions of gallons of preparation. The idea that any biological effects could be produced by these preparations is inconsistent with the observed dose-response relationships of conventional drugs. The proposed rationale for these extreme dilutions - that the water contains the "memory" or "vibration" from the diluted ingredient - is also counter to the accepted laws of chemistry and physics and has failed to get any support from scientific community.

Any positive results obtained from homeopathic remedies may be purely due to the placebo effect, where the patients subjective improvement of symptoms is based solely on the power of suggestion, due to the individual expecting or believing that it will work. Critics cite the lack of viable scientific studies for the effectiveness of homeopathic remedies as evidence that they are not effective and that any positive effects are due to the placebo effect. They also contend that homeopathy is inherently dangerous, because homeopaths offer a false hope to patients who could be getting proper treatment.

However, the supporters say that millions of persons are benefiting from homeopathy, and that popularity of the same is a testimony of its curative powers.

Different countries have different stand on this system of medicine. While FDA of USA allows it on the pretext that placebos don’t harm anyone, some European countries as well as India have more favorable approach towards it.

It is worth noticing here that a few decades back, when Indian Parliament passed a bill allowing homeopathy to be considered as one of the national systems of medicine, the main supporting reason was its low cost – which was important in a country like India. Now that metros are dotted with 5-star homeopathy clinics, and the revenue flow is quite comparable with the allopathic clinics, the game has certainly changed.