According to an Ipsos poll for “Le Parisien”, homeopathy continues to appeal to a majority of French people, despite the controversy surrounding its effectiveness. 74% of respondents are thus opposed to its delisting.
The controversy surrounding homeopathic medicines is not about to run out of steam. While health professionals have been struggling for months around the effectiveness of these small sugar granules and the opinion of the High Authority for Health (HAS) is awaited to maintain or not their reimbursement, The Parisian revive the debate.
In the edition dated this Friday, November 9, 2018, the daily publishes exclusive results of an Ipsos survey carried out with 2,000 people.
The acclaimed reimbursement
Its results are clear: 70% of French people questioned say they have recourse to homeopathy at the first symptoms of the disease. They are 74% to consider homeopathic medicines effective and just as much to oppose their delisting, currently insured at a high of 30% by Health Insurance. They are also 83% to consider legitimate that a doctor prescribes them in addition to a conventional drug.
“It is clear that the cessation of any reimbursement generates opposition from public opinion, but this is all the same to be related to the benefits that the French say they derive from homeopathy, which has a real anchoring in their practice of care”, analyzes Luc Barthélémy, health director of Ipsos quoted by The Parisian.
Fierce debate between “pro” and “anti” homeopathy
This unanimous plebiscite of patients for homeopathy comes as its reimbursement is increasingly contested. Last March, 124 health professionals signed a vitriolic platform in Le Figaro to denounce the effectiveness of alternative medicine such as homeopathy, deemed “expensive for public services” and based “on beliefs promising a miraculous and risk-free cure”.
“Faced with more and more numerous and esoteric practices, and with the growing mistrust of the public vis-à-vis scientific medicine, we had to react with force and vigor”, wrote then the signatories, who called for measures to no longer recognize these practices, no longer teach them and force health professionals to deviate from them.
In August, it was the turn of the High Authority for Health to interfere in the debate. The independent authority in charge of the evaluation of medicines was seized by the Ministry of Health to evaluate the effectiveness of homeopathy and the merits of its reimbursement. And nothing seems played for the defenders of homeopathy medicines. Indeed, in its opinions issued in June, the HAS Transparency Commission said it was surprised “at the maintenance of the reimbursement rate at 30% for non-proprietary homeopathic medicines given the reimbursement rate at 30%, or even 15% of drugs that have proven their effectiveness”.
A truth or a relentlessness
For pro-homeopathy health professionals, these unfavorable opinions on reimbursement are akin to “relentlessness”. “We’re going to end up sending all the homeopaths to a frozen plain in Siberia!”, Comments Dr. Mourad Benabdallah, a homeopathic doctor whose petition collected 33,000 signatures following the suspension in September of the university degree in homeopathy in Lille (North ). “This suppression is the best way to throw homeopathy to the ground. It’s not good for anyone and, above all, not for the sick.”
The opinion of the High Authority for Health on the maintenance of reimbursement for homeopathy is expected for the month of February 2019.
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