Health chiefs rebrand ‘centre for witchcraft’
Change of name for homeopathic hospital ‘is vital’
Published: 23 September, 2010
by TOM FOOT
BOSSES at the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital have changed its name four months after leading doctors derided it as a centre for “witchcraft”.
The country’s leading NHS funded hospital for homeopathic remedies has become the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine (RLHIM) – ending a 60 year association with the controversial treatments.
It follows criticism from the medical establishment and mounting speculation that homoeopathic treatments will be among the first cuts to the NHS.
Clinical Director Dr Peter Fisher said: “This change of name is vital so that patients and their doctors alike understand the range and breadth of services we now provide.”
The change was recommended by senior staff at NHS hospital and approved by directors of its parent trust, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) on Thursday.
Clinicians said the new name would better reflect the hospital’s range of services and had “nothing to do” with comments from deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, Dr Tom Dolphin.
Speaking at a conference in April, he said: “Homeopathy is witchcraft. It is a disgrace that nestling between the National Hospital for Neurology and Great Ormond Street there is a National Hospital for Homoeopathy which is paid for by the NHS.”
It triggered a massive debate that reached the House of Commons, with MPs calling for NHS funding for the treatments to end.
But dozens of patients in Camden rushed to the defence of the hospital, saying homoeopathy had worked when traditional medicine had failed.
Homoeopathy, devised in the 18th century by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, is based on a like-for-like theory where substances which cause symptoms in a healthy person can, when vastly diluted, cure the same problems in a sick person.
The National Hospital for Homeopathy has a massive contract with NHS Camden and provides more than 30,000 outpatient appointments a year.
Fewer than a fifth of the hospital’s patients are treated solely with homoeopathy – the majority receive no homeopathic treatments.
Professionals are training in complementary medicine and many have experience and qualifications in disciplines as varied as general practice, rheumatology and psychiatry and treatment of allergy.
Dr Fisher added: “Interest in our services is growing all the time and our name change reflects the integration of complementary and conventional disciplines.”