On 4 Aug 2016, the Australian Homeopathic Association (AHA),
Complementary Medicines Australia (CMA) & the Australian Traditional Medicine Association (ATMS) submitted a combined formal submission of complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman regarding the 2015 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) report into Homeopathy.


The submission is an intensive, year-long investigation into bias, conflicts of interest, methodological flaws and procedural irregularities associated with NHMRC’s review that distorted its findings and conclusions. 
 
This is a milestone moment for Australian Homoeopathy and complimentary & Alternative medicine (CAM) in general. The industry has come together to formally ask the Ombudsman to make the NHMRC answerable for the highly questionable process it has undertaken. The Ombudsman is being asked to recommend that the report be taken down in its entirety and that NHMRC take reasonable steps to correct unjust third-party damage it has caused.
 
No less than eight members of the skeptic group Friends of Science in Medicine were involved in the NHMRC review process, from the NHMRC Council to the NHMRC Principal Committee that guided the work, to the first Chair of the Homeopathy Working Committee, to a 2014 contractor engaged by the NHMRC. Worse, seven of these conflicts of interest were not disclosed at all; the other conflict was only partially disclosed with key details obfuscated.
Stakeholders and the community expect higher standards.
 
We hope this will represent a turning point in how government relates to the Homoeopathy and CAM sector, resulting in greater transparency and accountability within government, so that vested interest groups, such as the skeptics, can no longer distort government processes.



Image taken from http://blog.ucsusa.org/francesca-grifo/five-reasons-congress-should-support-strong-conflict-of-interest-standards-at-fda

Homeopathic medicine could possibly provide relief for acute respiratory (colds) and ear complaints in children & adults and has been shown to be more effective in treating these symptoms than conventional medicine.

In 2007, the outcomes of over 1500 patients suffering with at least one of the following complaints: acute runny nose, sore throat, ear pain, sinus pain or cough were studied and published. The patients, from 57 primary care practices in 8 countries, were given either Homeopathic medicine or conventional treatment.

The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of Homeopathic medicine compared to conventional treatment for acute respiratory and ear complaints. 857 people received homeopathic (H) and 720 conventional (C) treatment. The majority of patients in both groups reported their outcome after 14 days of treatment as complete recovery or major improvement.

Figure 3 Onset of improvement within the first week. Onset of improvement within the first week of treatment (cumulative percentages of patients that experienced their first improvement). Children n = 659 (homeopathy, 407; conventional, 252) and adults n = 907 (homeopathy, 445; conventional, 462). Full-set analysis values with * p = 0.0448 for children and * p = 0.0001 for adults, using the Chi-square test on data points of the whole curve.

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This comparative cohort study conducted by the HomInt organisation, Karlsruhe, Germany, involved 1557 patients in primary care practices from 6 European countries, the UK and the USA; and demonstrates homeopathic medicine for acute respiratory and ear complaints.

These results certainly contribute to the growing evidence that homeopathy could possibly be a beneficial treatment strategy for acute diseases in primary care settings.

http://bmccomplementalternmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6882-7-7
 

 Children and Homeopathic medicine

Homeopathic medicine could possibly be of  benefit in promoting the healthy development of children in common childhood illness such as ear infections. Homeopathic medicines can be given to children and babies- including newborns- with very little risk of toxic effects.

Simple to administer and inexpensive, Homeopathic medicine tastes good too!

Parents attempting to provide their children with the best health care possible, often give course after course of antibiotics for common recurring illness such as ear infections. However, many are now seeking alternative treatments for their children (and themselves) when they fall ill.

We live in a world of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as ‘‘a looming crisis in which common and treatable infections are becoming life threatening.’’ AMR is on the increase in Australia & evolving at a pace exceeding pharmaceutical companies’ ability to create newer antibiotic drugs.

 

  

Evidence-based advantages attributed to the use of Homeopathic medicine for ear infections include lower antibiotic prescription fill rates during watchful waiting in otitis media (ear infection), fewer and less serious side effects, the absence of drug-drug interactions and reduced parental sick leave from work.