Homeopathy is still in the sights of the government and doctors. Its reimbursement, the recognition of the discipline by the Order of Physicians and its teaching at the university are debated.
At the end of June, the transparency committee of the High Authority for Health (HAS) officially came out in favor of the delisting of homeopathy.
After having analysed more than 1,000 scientific publications, the contributions of stakeholders as well as the documents and files submitted by the three manufacturers (the French laboratory Boiron, world market leader, the Swiss Weleda and the German Lehning), it judged the effectiveness of homeopathy “insufficient to justify reimbursement”. Although the final decision rests with the Ministry of Health, Agnès Buzyn, who had affirmed that she would follow the advice of the HAS, has not yet expressed herself on the subject, considering the heat wave as a “priority”.
The Order of Physicians must decide
In October, it will be the turn of the Order of Physicians (Cname) decide on the recognition of the profession. In “full session”, the Order will meet to “deliberate and make a decision on the fact of authorizing or not the practitioners to keep the mention of “specialty” on their plate, has announced its president, Dr. Patrick Bouet. LThe authority can “either (the) extend or (the) delete”, but the doctors will be able to continue to practice, the “acquired rights” being protected by law.
To be clear, “if the right to the title were removed, that would mean that the mention homeopathy would no longer be recognized” by the College of Physicians. According to National Syndicate of French Homeopathic Doctors (SNMHF), France would have 5,000 homeopaths among our 60,000 general practitioners. The College also wants to know “the university’s position on teaching and graduating,” which shouldn’t be hard to fathom.
The end of his teaching at the university?
Indeed, the National College of General Practitioners (CNGE) at the university, published a open letter addressed to the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn this Friday to ask that homeopathy no longer be taught in medical school. “The absence of any theoretical model on which homeopathy could be based, an invention dating from the 18and century, the absurdity of the contents of ‘homeopathic medicine’, indications as well as therapeutics, should impose the protection of students against these pseudo-scientific deviations”, he argues. The National College thus considers that the teachings convey “gross aberrations at the antipodes of the scientific approach”, which must be “protected” by students and patients.
The opinion of the French
What do the French think? According to a Why Doctor poll, more than 71.5% of them are opposed to its delisting, considering that homeopathic treatments are “effective”, “natural”, “inexpensive”, “without danger” nor “side effects”. Homeopathy is “less toxic” than “products derived from petrochemicals and chemicals and much less expensive, it is nonsense to attack them”, declared one of our respondents on condition of anonymity.
Homeopathy “costs less to the social security than the specialties of pharmaceutical groups”. But how much does it cost exactly? In 2016, 129,001,456 boxes of granules, liquid solutions and other homeopathic products were reimbursed, representing a cost of 56 million euros out of a total of 19 billion reimbursements. Homeopathy therefore represents around 0.29% of drug reimbursements made by social security each year.
“S‘there is no more homeopathy, we will all fall back on allopathy (traditional medicine, editor’s note) which costs much more and often leads to side effects”, explains a respondent. And another to specify: “I myself am a user, I could no longer afford it if the drug is no longer reimbursed.” For the majority of our readers, dereimbursing homeopathy “would be heresy”.
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