Homeopathy can tackle COVID-19: Experts

Sfoorti Mishra

It has been more than three months since COVID-19 pandemic broke out and the hunt for its medicine has been intensified across the globe.

While the world health community is leaving no stone unturned to find a solution for the highly contagious disease, homeopathy practitioners say they should also be given a chance to attempt find therapeutic treatment of novel coronavirus and should be taken on the same page for finding its drug. Homeopathy is the longest established Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).

One of the most striking features of this unorthodox medicine is its ability to survive for centuries. Speaking to IANS, Dr Kushal Banerjee, of Dr Kalyan Banerjee's Clinic, one of the largest and oldest homeopathic practices in India and abroad, said, "Homeopathy has a good track record with epidemics and infectious diseases, therefore people should keep their biases aside and should try all treatments possible to save lives amid this pandemic.

"There are many examples where homeopathy did far better than allopathic. The biggest example is Spanish flu, going back to the time of the Scarlet fever epidemic, there were high survival rates in the treatment prescribed by Dr Samuel Hahnemann, father of homeopathy, when people were dying, by using conventional medicines. Most recently Dr Marino published papers in 2008-09 on Dengue and Swine flu. In 2009, a research paper was published in India, based on analysis of swine flu which happened in 2003 in which it was written that Homeopathy showed favorable trends so research must continue."

When asked if Homeopathy has a medicine for novel coronavirus, Banerjee said, "There is not much data available about COVID-19. Homeopathic medicine is also given even in ICU and in case of multiple organ failure, patients start recovering quickly. There are very effective medicines in homeopathy for respiratory diseases. Right now it is important to provide benefits to as many patients as possible. All philosophies and principles should be kept aside and saving lives should be the focus. If even five per cent patients who are on ventilators could be cured, that will be a great success," he said.

Talking about evidence that Homeopathy has while dealing with novel coronavirus pandemic, Banerjee said, "We have prescribed medicines looking at the symptoms of the disease and are collecting data. Almost 15,000 prescriptions of preventions of COVID-19 have been issued from our clinic since mid-January. We have patients in China, Singapore, Malaysia etc. We have been advising medicines, along with the public safety measures since December 31 when the first case was reported.

"We are in the process of analyzing data… There is a fundamental advantage of homeopathy that it can be given alongside Allopathy, it will not have any side effects. Homeopathy is absolutely safe to give to any age group of patients, be it a new born or elderly person. In case of COVID-19, there is no reason for not attempting homeopathy. Research in allopathy is going on across the world but there are still mortalities. Even allopathy is also doing symptomatic treatment. We are not saying that we have treatment for COVID-19 but allopathy also does not have it.

"Dynamics of treatments are changing every day, therefore homeopathy should also get an attempt. However people should follow public health measures, like hygiene and social distancing then there is no harm in taking medicine as a pre-emptive measure."

Another practitioner of Homeopathy, Dr Shalini Tomar of Swasthya Kalyan Homeopathic Medical College and Research Centre (SKHMC), Jodhpur, said, "It has been found in a research that besides Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and influenza -like illness (ILI), the novel coronavirus causes red blood cells (RBC) breakdown too, that's why the use of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) has been advocated recently as it is recommended in malaria. We have lots of medicines in Homeopathy which can help cure RBC."

(IANS).