Social Service and homeopathy as a public health strategy
T Villegas LÃpez National School of Medicine and Homeopathy of the National Institute Politechniche, Distrito Fe, Mexico
Homeopathy is a real health alternative, justified by the following factors:
* the limitations of medicines provided by the health centres of the communities,
* the current inability to effectively address public health problems,
* the difficulties which people have in accessing the institutional health services,
* the predominance of elderly people and children.
The National School of Homeopathic Medicine began to organize a strategy three years ago that considered:
* that homeopathy has a holistic vision which gives a wide framework to tackle public health problems,
* that homeopathic medicines are cheaper than allopathic ones,
* that homeopathy has a wide ranging impact especially on public health problems such as chronic diseases in geriatric and child sectors,
* that because of its holistic vision homeopathic intervention is as appropriate for prevention as it is for cure.
The proposed strategy includes different levels through all the ten semesters of the students’ training:
* 1st 4th semester: the students work with community health diagnosis and prevention such as vaccination,
* 4th 7th semester: students visit school practices to identify epidemiological health problems in different communities and the homeopathic medicaments they should use,
* 8th 10th semester: students work on specific health problems using homeopathic treatment in rural communities.
Students go to social services in specific marginal rural communities using homeopathic medicaments. The follow-up of this strategy indicates an increasing impact of homeopathy measured by the number of requests and the coverage in many more communities.