Informed Reader
November 16, 2007; Page B7

Wall Street Journal

MEDICINE

Rise of Homeopathy in India Adds to Health-Care Tensions

• THE LANCET -- NOV. 17
 

Homeopathic medicine's rising popularity in India has recently strained some of the tensions in that country's complex health-care system, says Raekha Prasad in the British medical journal the Lancet.

 

Homeopathic medicine, which claims to treat diseases with highly diluted doses of supposed remedies that cause the same symptoms as the disease, arrived with German missionaries nearly 200 years ago and caught on quickly. About 10% of the country relies solely on homeopathic medicine to treat illnesses. Homeopathic medicine has the third-largest of the Indian government's seven medical departments, of which only one is devoted to what Ms. Prasad calls modern medicine. Three quarters of India's homeopathic practitioners are trained by the state.

 

For the poor, homeopathic medicine is seen as a cheap, convenient and side-effect-free alternative to modern medicine, especially in rural areas where physicians are scarce. For the wealthy, it has become a fashionable treatment, giving rise to a private homeopathic industry in urban areas that is valued at about $165 million, but is rapidly increasing.

Despite such wide acceptance, homeopathy has caused some recent controversies. Many doctors trained solely in homeopathy have been giving their patients conventional drugs such as antibiotics, often in unconventional cocktails, which the Indian Supreme court considers quackery. Despite efforts to stop homeopaths practicing in areas they aren't qualified, about 90% of them are administering pharmaceutical drugs. Last month, a homeopathic doctor made national headlines for selling a homeopathic HIV cure for about $3,800 to hundreds of patients. He was prohibited from advertising the claim that he had cured 2,000 people of AIDS and is under investigation from medical authorities.