190 million pounds a year

England does not want to sponsor homeopathy

Julia Korowski, XX2 century

The National Health Service of England will stop purchasing homeopathic medicines at public expense – this is reported on the agency's website (NHS England launches action plan to drive out wasteful and ineffective drug prescriptions, saving the NHS over £190 million a year). In addition to homeopathy, 17 more medicines fell out of favor, which doctors considered insufficiently effective and even harmful. The service plans to reduce the cost of questionable drugs and use the money saved to improve primary care. According to representatives of the department, in this way it will be possible to save 190 million pounds a year.

The National Health Service of England (NHS England) is only one of the four independent public health systems in the UK. In addition to her , the country has:

• Health and Social Care Service in Northern Ireland

• National Health Service of Scotland

• National Health Service of Wales.

Each of these systems operates independently, and the government of the part of the UK in which it is located is responsible for its work. However, everyone has something in common: they are funded from taxes, most services are provided to citizens for free and a significant part of drugs for them is also free. In practice, this means that the medicines that the doctor prescribes to the patient are most often paid for by the state (although there are exceptions).

The National Health Service of England wants to allocate limited budget funds in the best possible way and abandon ineffective medicines. The plan is as follows: to develop instructions on which drugs to prescribe at public expense and which not, and to spend the money saved on improving healthcare. Recently, NHS England posted a draft of this guide to the public – over the next three months, citizens and organizations will be able to make proposals, and when everyone speaks out, the agency will prepare the final version.

In the preliminary version of the instructions, 18 types of drugs are called ineffective – including homeopathic and herbal products, unsaturated Omega-3 fatty acids, ointments to relieve muscle pain and others. NHS England does not recommend that doctors prescribe homeopathic remedies – moreover, if such appointments have already been made, they are advised to cancel them. According to the chairman of the National Health Service of England, Simon Stevens, homeopathy is "at best a placebo and a waste of limited NHS funds."

The Guardian reports that British doctors supported the new document. "Homeopathy relies on implausible assumptions, and the most reliable studies show that it only works as a placebo. If these drugs are used as an alternative to effective treatment, they can cause serious damage," says Edzard Ernst, professor at the University of Exeter. "Therefore, it's time for the NHS to stop funding homeopathy and spend these limited funds on drugs whose effectiveness is confirmed by reliable scientific data." "All trustworthy medical institutions know that homeopathic remedies do not cure any disease at all," says Michael Marshall, one of the directors of the Good Thinking Society, an organization that promotes rational thinking and scientific skepticism. "I am very pleased that NHS England has officially acknowledged this fact."

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  25.07.2017