Press release: Anti-microbial resistance, bacterial and viral infections and homeopathy’s potential to help address a growing crisis.
The world is facing a major crisis due to anti-microbial resistance. At the 66th World Health Assembly of the WHO in Geneva in May 2013 Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO in her opening address stated ‘The spread of antimicrobial resistance is rendering more and more first-line treatments useless. .. With few replacements in the pipeline, medicine is moving towards a post-antibiotic era in which many common infections will once again kill’ .. We must recognise, and respond to, the very serious threat of antimicrobial resistance.”
At a side event of the 66th WHA entitled ‘Antibiotic Resistance – a threat to Global Health Security and a Case for Action’ 12 countries outlined their strategies to address the problem, strategies that essentially involve: severely reducing antibiotic use in the humans and animals, preventing drug-resistant microbial infections and researching new pharmaceutical products. Despite the fact that there is serious doubt about the capacity of the pharmaceutical industry to develop new antimicrobial products (the last new antibiotic class was developed in 1987) not one country showed any lateral thinking and proposed exploring the use of alternative systems of prevention and treatment of infectious illness such as homeopathy or herbal medicine. This in our view, is a serious oversight, particularly from those countries such as India and China, both of which have a strong history of use of such systems.
In the face of the global crisis of antimicrobial resistance far more attention now needs to be paid to how medicinal systems such as homeopathy and herbal medicine can play a significant contributing role in combating the crisis and protecting the power of antibiotics for when then are truly needed.
As far as homeopathy is concerned existing evidence from RCTs and observational studies shows it can potentially have a frontline role to play in preventing and treating infectious illness.* (see appendix)
More centrally funded research is now needed to show how homeopathy can effectively play a role in the future prevention and treatment of infectious illness thereby helping prevent antimicrobial resistance and preserving antibiotic effectiveness.
Stephen Gordon
General Secretary,
International Council for Homeopathy
NB the file here includes the message above together with an appendix of references
ich press release -homeopathy and antimicrobial resistance.pdf