With thanks to The Society of Homeopaths Newsletter Winter 2008:
Cleve McIntosh is a family physician working at isolated clinics in rural South Africa, where he integrates homeopathy and allopathic medicine.
Cleve works as a GP and a homeopath close to a village called Acornhoek, near the Kruger National Park. He visits different clinics each day, some more than 20 miles from the local hospital.
These clinics are very busy and there is a severe shortage of doctors in rural public health care, which means that only patients with complex problems that have not responded to allopathic treatment prescribed by nurses are referred to Cleve.
Most patients speak only the local dialect and live in former homelands created by the apartheid regime, and despite the fact that South Africa is now a democracy, the resultant social disruption and poverty impacts directly onto patient’s lives.
Preventable conditions and diseases such as AIDS/HIV are common. Many people have little education and suffer unemployment.
“Six years ago when I started work here,” Cleve says, “providing even basic health care was a challenge. There was an ongoing problem with the supply fo allopathic medication and diagnostic tests, such as urine dipsticks or fingerprint glucose tests were sometimes unavailable.
“Unfortunately, many of the patients cannot afford the transport to the local hospital, even when they urgently need to go.
“Despite the frustrations, and possibly because of them, I began to realise that I could still help patients with homeopathy…”
“I recently treated a severely mentally retarded 28 year old women, who was extremely aggressive and violent, and drooling continuously since childhood.
“High doses of psychiatric medication had not helped at all, but after only a 3 doses of stramonium, her family can’t believe how well she is. No more aggression and the drooling resolves each time she takes a dose…. “
#1 by Sanjib Sarkar on October 12th, 2008
Quote
How well is Homeopathy accepted in South Africa? Is the government for or against it?