Following the recent announcement from Bristol Homeopathic Hospital that it will cease offering homeopathic remedies, another NHS Clinical Commissioning Group has confirmed to us that they will no longer waste money on this disproven treatment. Dorset CCG – who spent £8,000 on homeopathy in 2013/14 and whose equivalent bodies spent £45,000 per year from 2006-2010 – recently responded to our Freedom on Information request to tell us:
“Dorset CCG does not have a contract in place with the Portland Centre for Integrative Medicine or any other homeopathy supplier for homeopathic services. Complementary medicines and therapies are not commissioned by Dorset CCG.”
We welcome this move by Dorset CCG, given that it represents a further reduction in the number of CCGs who still fund homeopathy. We continue to urge other CCGs to follow suit.
What’s more, in a recent blog post Professor Jayne Lawrence, Chief Scientist for the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, has spoken out against homeopathy. Professor Lawrence’s calls for pharmacists to “cast homeopathy from the shelves and focus on scientifically based treatments backed by clear clinical evidence” echo our own appeal to NHS Clinical Comissioning Groups to cease funding for ineffective treatments (of which homeopathy is only one) – something we explained at length in our article published in the June volume of The Pharmaceutical Journal.
