Sunday December 25 2005 08:54 IST

Deviating from the trend of rejecting homeopathy treatment and medicine as mere placebos, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that homeopathy is the second-most used medical system internationally.

"Clinical trials have proved that this method of treatment has been successful if the practitioners have taken into account the individual holistic nature of the patient before opting for homeopathy," says Dr T N Sreedhara Kurup, Assistant Director In-Charge of the Central Research Institute for Homeopathy.

Different patients will receive different treatments for the same disease making it difficult to conduct randomised control trials, he said. "Homeopathy is that stream of medicine, which prescribes medicines suitable to the individual and the cost of treatment is affordable when compared to Allopathy. Besides, it is claimed that homeopathic medicines are devoid of any harmful side-effects," says Dr Ravi M Nair, a homeopathy specialist.

About 500 million people rely on homeopathy treatment in the world. As a system of medicine, it draws support from hundreds of thousands of doctors, teaching institutions and universities where homeopathy is taught.

Research centres and manufacturing units with focus on developing newer drugs for treatment of diseases provide ample proof that homeopathic medicines are not mere placebos, Nair said. Modern medicine and research too have arrived at a premise that many diseases have their origin in genes. It was 200 years ago that Samuel Hahnemann started working on this concept to evolve a mode of treatment based on the individual requirements called homeopathy, he said.

Newindpress, India - 24 Dec 2005