Multimorbidity – multiple diseases in the one person – is now a large-scale epidemic, and not just in rich countries.
With the increase of multimorbidity, many patients are on 7-8 drugs at a time leading to an 80% risk of adverse drug reactions.
According to Dr Peter Fisher, effective alternatives are needed, especially for antibiotics of which there have been no new classes discovered since the 1970s and overuse of existing ones has led to antibiotic resistance and ineffectiveness.
While the British government has a strategy to slow the problem of antibiotic resistance, it won’t fix it.
Dr Fisher argues that homeopathy is an effective treatment that can reduce antibiotic use. For example, a study has clearly shown it to be effective in upper respiratory tract infections in children.
He quotes a large-scale study of almost 7,000 patients in France which compared patients who visited homeopath physicians with ones who visited conventional physicians. The study had three cohorts – musculoskeletal problems, upper respiratory tract infections, and sleep and psychological disorders. Those seen by the homeopathic physicians had a reduce drug and antibiotic use.
A second study from France with 500 children with recurrent upper respiratory tract infection again showed a dramatic difference in treatment and outcomes between those who attended practitioners who integrated homeopathy and those who didn’t.
Again and again, the evidence shows a pattern of reduced antibiotics and other drugs when homeopathy is incorporated.
