Homeopathic vaccine given to 200,000 people in India to help stem dengue fever.

Ongoing Story: With the outbreak of dengue fever in India, the homopathic vaccine Eupatorium Perfoliatum has continued to be distributed and has shown positive results in treatment, and preventing the ailment. 

Two hundred thousand people have been administered homoeopathy medicine free of charge so far as part of a drive to prevent the outbreak of dengue fever in the district. The Government Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital at Thirumangalam near here has been conducting special camps to distribute homeopathy pills following the spread of dengue in the district last year. Apart from holding free camps in urban and rural areas with the consent of the Corporation and local bodies, doctors from the homoeopathic college distributed medicines in Sivaganga and Tuticorin districts as well.

“Dengue preventive medicine was given to 240,000 persons in three districts put together through our college. In Madurai district alone, 47 homoeopathy camps were conducted,” A. Gopalakrishnan, Principal in-charge, Government Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital, toldThe Hindu on Wednesday.

Doctors have been distributing ‘Eupatorium Perfoliatum’ medicine for adults and children in the prescribed dosage. Dr. Gopalalakrishnan said camps were not conducted since December 22 because of the festival holidays. The camps will resume shortly. “A special camp is planned on January 18 and 19 in TVS Group companies for the benefit of 4,500 employees and their families,” the Principal added. A homoeopathy dispensary is likely to come up in the Government Rajaji Hospital, sources said. During the recent visit of the Tamil Nadu Assembly Assurance Committee, the issue was raised by Thirumangalam MLA M. Muthuramalingam, who sought a dispensary in the GRH.

“There is a Siddha dispensary and it is quite appropriate to request for a homoeopathy facility as well. It is being considered and the Government is likely to sanction it after a consultation with the dean,” an official said.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Madurai/homoeopathy-medicine-given-to-two-lakh-people/article4315617.ece

Ancient medical remedies further practiced for dengue fever.

As we have been covering the dengue fever epidemic in India, trends of treatment have shown great success in ancient remedies and homeopathy. 

From Forbes Magazine: 

A viral outbreak at the southern tip of India has pushed an old village treatment into clinical trials as a treatment for dengue fever.

Dengue, a disease delivered through the sting of mosquitoes, is reaching epidemic proportions across the world’s tropical latitudes, especially in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu (where I am currently based). The number of cases quadrupled this year, representing nearly a quarter of all reported cases and deaths in the country. The state reported 60 deaths and 9,000 victims through November, a tally that may be underreported.

Last month, the state health minister asked government hospitals to furnish dengue patients with a “mocktail” of juice made from neem and papaya leaves. The elixir dates back 2,500 years to the birth of Siddha medicine, a South Indian practice that is a close cousin of ayurvedic medicine.

Then, this week, the King Institute of Preventive Medicine, a flagship government hospital in the Tamil Nadu capital of Chennai, announced its intention to do a double-blind study to see how effective the neem-papaya mix is in battling dengue. This month it started a trial in rats to make sure the treatment isn’t toxic.

Dengue fever is usually not fatal, but its main symptoms are high fever, muscle aches and pain. Western medicine has no cure for dengue, relying instead on pain relievers and fever reducers.

The neem tree is something of a miracle plant in India. It is a shade tree that grows well in areas without much rain. Its bitter leaves are an ingredient in South Indian rasam and curries, and its oil is a common additive to cosmetics, laundry soap, shampoos and toothpaste. Powder made from neem seeds are used in traditional Indian agriculture to ward off insects, and a meal made from neem is plowed into soil as a fertilizer.

Homeopathic remedy for dengue fever now in tests.

A homeopathic drug extracted from a plant native to the US and used as a traditional medicine in that country the 19th century, promises a cure for dengue, says a study by the state-run King Institute of Preventive Medicine.

The King Institute team headed by a Chennai-based homoeopath administered the drug extracted from Eupatorium perfoliatum to 50 patients with secondary dengue and found all of them recovered. "The platelet counts came under control for almost all patients and blood tests showed marked improvement," said King Institute director Dr P Gunasekaran. The study, lead by Dr N R Jayakumar of Madan Homoeo Clinic, was presented at an international symposium on 'Challenges and strategies in the prevention and management of viral infections' at Central Learther Research Institute recently.

Homeopathy being used to help fight dengue fever .

Indian health authorities are using Homeopathy to help combat dengue fever. 

India 

The Medical and Health Department has taken its first step towards a major crackdown on dengue fever by intending to cover a population of 25 lakh residents of Chittoor district. The officials have announced that they will distribute homeopathic drugs throughout the district in the next seven to ten days, starting from Madanapalle.

Homeopathic drugs are said to have better preventive qualities when compared to allopathic drugs. In fact, the recent swine flu attack in Kurnool district was contained in less than a fortnight after the mass distribution of a homeopathic medicine.

Taskforce formed

The Department of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) has formed a taskforce with district programme co-ordinator Murali Babu, which will ensure the distribution of the drug to every nook and corner of Chittoor district. “We formally launched the event at Madanapalle on Monday, with a team of 40 doctors going for a house-to-house survey, both to create awareness as well as distribute the drugs,” said K.V. Ramana, Regional Deputy Director (Rayalaseema), Department of AYUSH.

George Vithoulkas: "Homeopathy's expansion in India is stunning."

George Vithoulkas is the founder of International Academy of Classical Homeopathy 

Nothing seems to excite him more than the thought of his days in India. George Vithoulkas, widely regarded as 'the maestro of classical homoeopathy', says it is heartening to see homoeopathy growing in India at a fast clip. For the record, the homoeopathic market is expected to double in the country to Rs 5,873 crore in five years. He offers a reason for this growth, "Morality and spirituality in its essential sense are stronger in India than other countries." 

He admits that his explanation sounds strange. "But it is true," he insists. "I know India from my experience of living there for a long period." Vithoulkas, now 79, studied homoeopathy in South Africa and in Kolkata. He passed out from the Indian Institute of Homoeopathy, Calcutta, in 1966, and returned to Greece to practise and teach the world's youngest system of medicine. 

The Greek physician says tragedy is yet to engulf India and other developing countries in a big way. The tragedy he is referring to is the one caused by the overuse of allopathic drugs. "Countries such as India, Pakistan and those in South America are lucky that they cannot supply chemical drugs for all their people." According to him, shortage of medical supplies is in a way a blessing in disguise for these non-developed countries: they haven't yet suffered the damage that chemical drugs inflict upon people in rich countries. 

But Vithoulkas knows it only too well that homoeopathy needs to grow much more to emerge as a 'real alternative' to the 'chemicals-infested' modern medicine, which has already made inroads into emerging markets. 

"At this moment, homoeopathy is not ready to take over the bulk of medical care in any country," he notes. But, he says, poor countries can afford to invest in promoting homoeopathy. "The conventional system of medicine has reached a dead end, and the new medicine will be the energy medicine that homoeopathy offers," he claims. But then, what was that about homoeopathy lacking in scientific evidence? 

He counters the argument raised famously in a 2005 Lancet article that compared the effect of homoeopathicmedicines to that of the placebo effect. "This is not an argument against homoeopathy. 

It is a pretentious excuse that the pharma industry uses to attack homoeopathy. It is almost ridiculous to believe that remedies that act on babies and animals have a placebo effect," he says. There is a tinge of sarcasm, too. "If homoeopaths have the power to instal in the patient belief that can cure without remedies, then I will salute them as superhuman. I know only one person who was able to treat on the basis of belief and that person was Jesus Christ." 

Let's not forget, he says, that it is homoeopathy that now epitomes 'evidence-based medicine', an idea originally introduced by practitioners of conventional medicine. Vithoulkas goes on to list reasons why governments should take solid initiatives to promote homoeopathy. 

"Governments are elected by the people with the hope that they will work and protect them, not pharmaceutical companies. Homoeopathy's remedies are cheap and can be produced locally. Using homoeopathic remedies also means saying no to the sideeffects of strong chemical drugs. Insurance systems that exist in the West have almost gone bankrupt due to massive rise in chronic diseases that require constant treatment with extremely expensive allopathic drugs." 

For original article read here: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/comments-analysis/homoeopathys-growth-in-india-is-stunning-george-vithoulkas/articleshow/10448621.cms?intenttarget=no

Scientists Find New Superbugs in Drinking Water.

New Superbugs found in Indian drinking water are antibiotic resistant. A gene that makes bugs highly resistant to almost all known antibiotics has been found in bacteria in water supplies in New Delhi used by local people for drinking, washing and cooking The NDM 1 gene, which creates what some experts describe as "super superbugs," has spread to germs that cause cholera and dysentery, and is circulating freely in other bacteria in the Indian city capital of 14 million people, the researchers said.

from Reuters: 

"The inhabitants of New Delhi are continually being exposed to multidrug-resistant and NDM 1-positive bacteria," said Mark Toleman of Britain's Cardiff University School of Medicine, who published the findings in a study on Thursday.

A "substantial number" of them are consuming such bacteria on a daily basis, he told a briefing in London. "We believe we have discovered a very significant underlying source of NDM 1 in the capital city of India," he said.

NDM 1, or New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1, makes bacteria resistant to almost all antibiotics, including the most powerful class, called carbapenems.

It first emerged in India three years ago and has now spread across the world. It has been found in a wide variety of bugs, including familiar pathogens like Escherichia coli, or E. coli.

No new drugs are on the horizon for at least 5-6 years to tackle it and experts are concerned that only a few major drug companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, still have strong antibiotic development programs.

Toleman's study, carried out with Cardiff University's Timothy Walsh and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, investigated how common NDM 1-producing bacteria are in community waste seepage -- such as water pools or rivulets in streets -- and tap water in urban New Delhi.

The researchers collected 171 swabs from seepage water and 50 public tap water samples from sites within a 12 kilometer radius of central New Delhi between September and October 2010.

The NDM 1 gene was found in two of the drinking-water samples and 51 of seepage samples, the researchers said, and bacteria positive for NDM 1 were grown from two drinking-water samples and 12 seepage samples.

"We would expect that perhaps as many as half a million people are carrying NDM 1-producing bacteria as normal (gut) flora in New Dehli alone," Toleman said.

Experts say the spread of superbugs threatens whole swathes of modern medicine, which cannot be practiced if doctors have no effective antibiotics to ward off infections during surgery, intensive care or cancer treatments like chemotherapy.

In a commentary about Walsh and Toleman's findings, Mohd Shahid from Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India, said global action was needed.

"The potential for wider international spread of ... NDM 1 is real and should not be ignored," he wrote.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has designated April 7 as World Health Day and under the slogan "No action today, no cure tomorrow" it is campaigning about the risks of life-saving antibiotics losing their healing power.

"We are at a critical point in time where antibiotic resistance is reaching unprecedented levels," said Zsuzsanna Jakab, the WHO's regional director for Europe.

"Given the growth of travel and trade in Europe and across the world, people should be aware that until all countries tackle this, no country alone can be safe."