Homeopaths in Maharashtra now practice modern medicine after pharmacology certification

Homeopaths are now practicing modern medicine after receiving pharmacology certificates.

The country's first medical council-registered homeopath, Mankhurd-based Neha Pawar, has kept her shop closed for the past year. In its place stands a motor driving school. Pawar was given her certificate by the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) on Aug 3, despite severe pushback from the medical community. Maharashtra's total count of homeopaths allowed to practice modern medicine based on a one-year Certificate Course in Modern Pharmacology (CCMP) rose to ten this week, with Pawar and Mayuresh Kamble being the only two based in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. There are more than 10,000 such applicants. Experts point out that this massive demand to cross-practice stems from large-scale job insecurity.

This situation forces locals to seek cheaper and more accessible alternative practitioners.

Dr Abhay Shukla, co-convener of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, said, "We need to sympathise with them. They have years of training into something that does not work. Policies should now use whatever skills they have. The one-year pharmacology certificate course is insufficient but with rigorous training, they could be deployed in limited capacities at primary health centres." In Mankhurd's Ambedkar Nagar, Pawar's erstwhile clinic is surrounded by alternative practitioners like her. There is no MBBS doctor in sight, forcing locals to blindly trust whoever they can find. Those who do remember her recall her clinic as one of the many that opened and shut, but also a place they went to for occasional fever and cough check-ups. The area is home to many of the city's daily wage earners. Tasneem Usmani, a local pharmacist, said, "There is no option here for people. There are no MBBS doctors very close by, but others [alternative practitioners] are accessible and cheap, so they take a chance. The practitioners give their own tablets wrapped in paper." Pawar has been giving out allopathic medicines since 2017, years before she was legally permitted to do so. She told TOI that the shop is now closed for personal reasons and that she has no immediate plans to resume practice. "All we check is if their registration is active with the homeopathic council and if they have any cases of negligence against them," said MMC registrar Dr Rakesh Waghmare. Her clinic was next to that of Shagufta Basha, a Unani practitioner, who said alternative medicine practitioners in the area -- such as herself, or ayurveda practitioners and homeopaths -- charge a small sum of Rs 100 and give out allopathic medicines to patients with fever, cough, typhoid and malaria. "TB patients are referred to a nearby BMC clinic. There is one MBBS doctor ten minutes away, but he is expensive for this population," she said. Dr Vijay Chavan, a pulmonologist who has treated TB patients for years in Mankhurd-Govandi, said the fees of an MBBS general physician there is Rs 200-300, so many walk into the first cheaper alternative they see, and it doesn't matter who sits there. "It is a risk and a problem, and it backfires many times with patients finally reaching doctors with some adverse reaction. But to be fair, even qualified MBBS doctors have been contributing to the haphazard use of medicines," Dr Chavan said. Inside homeopath Mayuresh Kamble's clinic at Survale Nagar, Badlapur (East), a rate card is pasted on the wall: Rs 150 for a consultation, Rs 200 for a consultation with an injection, Rs 50 for a BP check and the same charge for a dressing, Rs 100 for an injection prescribed by another doctor, and Rs 500-700 for a home visit. Most of his patients are working-class, he said. "When I started the practice here and had opened a shop in the area, there was almost nothing here. Buildings were coming up, and construction workers used to visit me for treatment." In the over an hour that TOI spent at his clinic, there were parents bringing their children with injuries for dressings, diabetes patients, respiratory distress patients, and patients complaining of fever and cough, many bringing their blood reports for advice, and even those with known high cholesterol. He looked at chest X-rays to check if one of his patients had TB or if it was a case of bronchitis. Many of his patients were people who had visited some other doctor in the recent past, farther from their homes, and landed up at his clinic because it was the closest option for a quick consultation. They also did not know that Kamble is a homeopath, though his board mentioned qualifications such as BHMS with CCMP. Homeopathy was almost entirely absent in his clinic. The medicines Kamble prescribed ranged from standard antibiotics to cough syrups, and he even considered statins for one of his patients if they did not visit a referred doctor. Throughout the time TOI spent by his desk, not a single homeopathic pill was prescribed -- barring one packet to a diabetic patient.