Ebola victims in one of the hardest-hit parts of Liberia have been treated by homeopaths who are determined to prove that arsenic, rattlesnake venom and the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly can cure Ebola.
The
homeopaths arrived in Liberia to use the deadly outbreak to prove their
controversial theories and have already spent two weeks in the country
with patients in a hospital in Ganta, in the north of the country near
to the epicentre of the outbreak.
In
letters and messages seen by Mail Online they revealed that the aim of
their mission was to prove that homeopathy could treat Ebola.
'The
manufacturers of experimental vaccines will then have to change their
opinions,' boasted Dr Edouard Broussalian, one of the team of two men
and two women working in the remote area.
Experiment in Homeopathy: A team
visited Ganta United Methodist Hospital, Liberia, with the intention of
testing controversial treatment methods on Ebola victims
'Homeopathy
can help Ebola victims': Dr Ortrud Lindemann, from Germany, and Dr
Richard Hiltner, from California, United States, are part of the team
who travelled to Ganta, Liberia to treat sufferers
Snake venom treatment: Medical staff
and patients walk past a bucket of chlorinated water at Ganta United
Methodist Hospital, Liberia, where homeopaths went to try to test their
remedies
The
mission was organised by the Liga Medicorum Homeopathica
Internationalis, an international group dedicated to promoting
homeopathy.
A
message on its website proclaims the initial visit a success because,
it claims, the team's results were so 'impressive' that they were asked
to establish a program of homeopathic teaching and treatment at the
hospital.
'The
mission's broader goal of bringing homeopathy to Liberia is therefore
underway, thanks to the four volunteers and their work,' it said.
But
their intervention has dismayed critics of the controversial technique,
whose practitioners use dilutions of substances in water.
Mike
Noyes, the head of humanitarian response at UK charity ActionAid, which
has teams who support clinics in Sierra Leone and Liberia, told
MailOnline: 'With this crisis, you can't be offering false hope.
'There is no scientific evidence that homeopathy has any impact on dealing with viral disease like Ebola.
'Coming in from the outside with these unproven approaches is damaging to the response and bringing the disease under control.'
Homeopaths
claim that the way their remedies are prepared - which includes hitting
the container 10 times against a leather and horsehair surface - give
them a special potency and that the water molecules remember the
presence of the active ingredient. Their opponents dismiss the
'treatments' as mumbo-jumbo and fear that desperately-ill Ebola patients
will die as a result of their involvement.
The
homeopaths - all medical doctors by training - arrived in Liberia on
October 17 and the intervention of a team of international doctors was
initially welcomed by the ministry of health, desperate for help in
fighting a virus that has already killed more than 5,000 people.
'An ethical
duty to help': Dr Edouard Broussalian, from Geneva, Switzerland and Dr
Medha Durge, from Mumbai, India, visited Ganta Hospital in Liberia as
part of a trip to establish if homeopathy could treat Ebola
Remote Ebola hotspot: People outside
Ganta United Methodist Hospital, Liberia trying to persuade staff to
release the body of a relative who has died from suspected Ebola.
Homeopaths visited the hospital
Testing ground for homeopathic
doctors: A bucket of chlorinated water at Ganta United Methodist
Hospital, Liberia, where a team of homeopaths has visited to try to test
their remedies on Ebola patients
But
the homeopaths suffered a setback when health officials discovered that
they intended to experiment with homeopathic treatments on Ebola
sufferers.
The
team was allowed to travel to Ganta United Methodist Hospital, but on
strict instructions not to use homeopathic remedies. Whether they
followed those instructions is not known because the hospital in Ganta
said it did not monitor their activity.
When
Mail Online went to the hospital to find the doctors, assistant
administrator Patrick Mantor said they had left. 'There were four of
them. One left earlier and three of them left last Friday.
'They
came first to do some homeopathic treatment but the paper arrangement
was not made with the ministry of health. They said another group might
come.
'They
were seeing people with pains and weakness. I wasn't present when they
were doing this so I don't know how they treated them. I don't know
anything about homeopathy.
'The process is going on in their absence so that they can come back with the proper paperwork.'
Dr
Moses Massaquoi, head of Ebola case management for the Liberian health
ministry, confirmed that the homeopaths had gone to Ganta but he said he
was unaware that they were homeopaths when they first arrived.
'I didn't know that they were going to do homeopathy,' he said.
He
said that the homeopaths had been told that they were not to try to
practice homeopathy on Ebola patients, but they were allowed to go to
the hospital to help out as physicians.
'They said they wouldn't use any homeopathy,' he said.
But
the homeopaths hope that they can overcome the initial setback and
press on with their mission, and have applied to return to Liberia.
Dr
Broussalian explained their mission - to discover what homeopathic
treatment would cure Ebola - on his own website, Planete Homea, in a
post he later deleted.
He
and his colleagues have made efforts to erase references to their trips
after they were seized on by critics, but traces remain on the internet
and Mail Online has been able to access much of the original material.
In a post [in French] titled Mission Ebola Dr Broussalian explained how they planned to tackle Ebola:
Epidemic escalates: In Sierra Leone,
which neighbours Liberia, Health workers in Freetown carried a corpse
out of a house yesterday. Homeopaths have been trying to treat victims
of Ebola with snake venom
Dignified burial: Health workers from
the Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 place a body in a
grave at King Tom cemetary in Freetown yesterday
Taking no
chances: The burial teams are carefully prepared for the retrieval
missions in Sierra Leone, which has seen an increase in Ebola cases
compared to neighbouring Liberia
'Using
the basic clinical details available to us, I carried out an initial
study to allow us to target the group of potential medicines.
'Hydrogenising
arsenic the obvious starting point, with serpent venom (the reputation
of which in the case of yellow fever or complaints with coagulation
problems is no longer useful) with Lachesis and especially Crotalus. In
particular we mustn't forget Cantharis which shows a huge number of
symptoms of the illness. But we need to be at the bedside of the
patients without any foregone conclusions and to listen to what nature
tells us.'
Crotalus
is rattlesnake venom. Lachesis is the venom of the South American
bushmaster snake. Cantharis, obtained from Spanish Fly, can be highly
toxic and in sufficient concentration causes urinary and sexual
problems. Spanish Fly has long been used as an aphrodisiac.
[Ebola] is a unique opportunity to demonstrate the value of homeopathy...
we hope to treat such large numbers that no challenge will be possible
Dr Edouard Broussalian
Dr
Broussalian, however, is confident that the potions will help Ebola
victims: 'Necessity is the mother of invention, we have an ethical duty
to help these depleted populations and if all goes as planned to provide
them with a strong and more or less cost-free defence against this
scourge.
'Backed by experience in the future we will probably be able to take care the European cases if they should occur.
'Finally,
it is a unique opportunity to demonstrate the value of homeopathy. Of
course they [their critics] will challenge us as to whether the 'cured
patients' were really ill in the first place, but we hope to treat such
large numbers that no challenge will be possible. The manufacturers of
experimental vaccines will then have to change their opinions.'
The
four doctors involved in the mission were Dr Richard Hiltner, from
California, United States; Dr Edouard Broussalian, from Geneva,
Switzerland: Dr Ortrud Lindemann, from Germany, and Dr Medha Durge, from
Mumbai, India.
Epidemic spreads: Health workers work
at an Ebola treatment center in Bamako, Mali, today, as the government
announced tougher health checks at border crossings after registering
its second Ebola outbreak
Crackdown: The Mali government has
ordered tougher health checks at the border after a second outbreak
emerged. Healthworkers (above) at an Ebola treatment center in Bamako,
Mali today
They
checked into the Wingus Guesthouse in the capital Monrovia and two days
after they arrived, Dr Lindemann wrote a letter to supporters updating
them on their progress. Her letter can be found on the Facebook pages of
some of those supporters.
'On arrival the atmosphere is tense, we get our aprox temperature taken. Warnings about Ebola everywhere!!!,' she wrote.
One
piece of their luggage was missing, but she was relieved that it did
not include any of the 110 remedies they had brought with them.
'How Could we have dared to go here without our most valuable tools???,' she wrote.
The
group was met by a small party including a representative of the
ministry of foreign affairs and someone from the health department.
'We
finally reached after so many weeks of struggling to be able to travel
to what we had decided to do. We are destined to help the people of
Liberia to fight Ebola Virus Disease with an effective means of fighting
epidemics : homeopathic remedies.'
Their target was the hospital in Ganta where, Dr Lindemann wrote there were only three Liberian doctors working.
Homeopathic remedies: British medical
journal The Lancet has attacked the use of homeopathic treatments saying
that doctors should be honest about homeopathy's lack of benefit
From gunpowder to snake venom:
Homeopathic treatments have come under for not being effective but a
team is trying to test them in one of the worst Ebola hotspots in
Liberia
She
described meeting the board of the hospital who 'were so interested in
our mission that we had a hard time leaving after two hours and asked/
pleaded us to not only stay for our intended three weeks.'
The
organisers of the mission, the LHMI, say they wrote to the Liberian
government in August to offer the services of homeopaths in the
treatment of Ebola patients.
It
said they received an invitation on October 7 and noted that the World
Health Organisation had declared the outbreak an international public
health emergency and endorsed the use of experimental, unproven and
unregistered interventions.
It
said: 'Even if the homeopathic treatment were to be completely
ineffective - which we do not expect - it would still be compliant with
the WHO rules. Furthermore a homeopathic treatment with high potencies
would have no possible side effect and, in the worst case, the mortality
would correspond to that of all other treatment centers.'
The mission's goal of bringing homeopathy to Liberia is underway, thanks to the four volunteers and their work
International homeopathy group
The
LMHI said it was surprised that the team were not allowed to use
homeopathy on Ebola patients during this visit, but put that down to 'a
few diplomatic problems'.
But it said they had been able to use their skills to treat 'very severe' non-Ebola patients.
'Both
hospital and clinic out-patients were seen and treated, with impressive
results. The results were so promising that the LMHI were requested on
departure to establish a program of homeopathic teaching and treatment
in the Hospital. The mission's broader goal of bringing homeopathy to
Liberia is therefore underway, thanks to the four volunteers and their
work.'
There
have been a large number of deaths from Ebola in and around Ganta since
the start of the outbreak. Ten people died in the space of just 48
hours in September and the hospital now has a specialised Ebola
treatment unit.
According to his own website, Richard Hiltner has been a medical doctor for 39 year, including 35 as a homeopath.
Dr Broussalian is 52 and according to his website started learning homeopathy at the age of 15.
Dr Lindemann qualified as a doctor in 1986 in Germany and has been a homeopath since 1989.
Dr Durge runs a homeopathy clinic in the Thane district of Mumbai in India. She has been a doctor for 22 years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2834259/Homeopaths-sent-deadly-Ebola-hotspot-treat-victims-ARSENIC-SNAKE-VENOM.html
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