Page 6 - Autumn 16

IAVH Newsletter
Dear Colleagues,
Thinking about what I shall put in my letter for this edition of the magazine I reflect on the news. The world has produced some unexpected election results this year. I am not going into a deep analysis about what happened but only conclude that anything is possible if you want it enough. It is called democracy but it is also called motivation and investment in time and commitment.
We all have chosen to be homeopaths. Mostly this is because of our commitment to do
7th EPHA (EUROPEAN PUBLIC HEALTH ALLIANCE) ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 8 SEPTEMBER 2016 ANTIBIOTICS, POLITICS AND PUBLIC HEALTH – RESISTANCE
The conference was organized by an EU committee about the problem of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR), a growing problem in the human and veterinary world. Ton Nicolai (Eurocam), Stephen Gordon (ECCH), Andreas Biesantz (Antroposofical doctors) and I (Liesbeth Ellinger) attended the conference.
There is a health aspect of course, but also the economic loss is enormous. Goal of the day is to exchange knowledge and to find solutions. The 18 November 2016 is the European Antibiotic Awareness Day (during the ECH- conference, maybe we can do something with it).
The topic was viewed from different angles:
the best we can for our patients. We have gone into great efforts to learn to practice homeopathy. It has never been easy for anybody and the effort needed to learn homeopathy may well be the reason why some of our colleagues have given up homeopathy or never had the courage to take up its study.
The mission of the IAVH is to promote homeopathy. We talk to legislators, we liaise with other organisations; we bring together homeopaths from all over the world. To make homeopathy popular, we also have to work on tools to help colleagues, who would like to learn homeopathy or progress in their knowledge.
Helping our colleagues is something we can all do. An active forum is one way of achieving this: post your questions and your opinions. I promised in previous letters that time and time again I would draw your attention to this wonderful project, which is the
Veterinary Homeopathic Materia Medica (MMVH). I have managed it again. Send in your thoughts about your experience with remedies, add information to remedies that have already been published or translate some of the material available. The MMVH will only become really relevant, if you all participate. Once our new website will be up and running, access will become more convenient for our members.
We also always have to think about, how we attract more vets to take up homeopathy. This will happen by making homeopathy more mainstream acceptable and also through offering courses that are exciting and allow for efficient acquisition of the bases and techniques of homeopathic practice.
There is always much to do in the IAVH. Anybody who would like to help in any of the above activities, Please do not hesitate to contactus. Edward
and when those methods don’t work, use the “stronger” ones like antibiotics. It will lower the costs, lower the use of antibiotics and will help to lower the AMR.
Although people agreed, it was often mentioned that there was no evidence: we will send several people a number of good RCT’s with homeopathy to show that treatment and prevention can be done with homeopathy.
Ton and I spoke with the Director General of Public Health, Ministry of Health of the Netherlands, who invited us to come to the Ministry to speak with her – a nice start. We also spoke to Silvio Brusaferro, Professor of Hygiene in Udine, Italy. He was interested in research-outcome, so we promised him to send several studies.
We did networking and tried to talk about homeopathy and CAM with as many people as possible, especially from governments and from the WHO.
It is clear that many people don’t know about the research, which is done in homeopathy, and it opens their mind, if you can show that proper research has been done. I think it was a fruitful day. Liesbeth Ellinger
• AMR as a case-study: investing in public health
• AMR and prevention: hygienic measurements, prevention
of infection
• AMR, research and innovation
• AMR and animal welfare: most
interesting lecture from Mette Vaarst (Denmark): the solution is not the problem, but the implementation often is difficult: farmer groups learning from each other turns out to work well.
At the end of the day, we tried to move towards a One-Health approach, which was not very easy. During the day the approach was more or less the same, from different angles: first we must try to prevent disease/infection, and if there is infection we must give antibiotics in a
proper way.
We tried to emphasize that one step is
forgotten: first try prevention, and when an animal or a person gets ill, FIRST use the “soft” healing methods (phytotherapy, homeopathy),
Interim Treasurer Report 2015 – Liesbeth Ellinger
In November 2015, I was asked to become interim treasurer. Sara Fox Chapman was willing to be the next treasurer, so partly we worked together this year.
Markus Mayer decided to discontinue his support cooperation with the IAVH, but he continued to work for us during our transitional period to the new office staff (Sam Finlay) with the new IT Cloud-based system by Manfred Markhorst c.s. The office of Markus worked for us until August/September, on a low level. They charged us until April 29, according to the work requested.
Some accounts ask for special attention:
We have a Swiss account, which is perfectly fit for PayPal payments. That account was still under the supervision of Andreas Schmidt, our treasurer some years ago, who had been a board member for about 20 years. It is almost impossible to get a bank account in the name of an organisation, so Andreas assisted us in transferring that account to the name of the IAVH. We now have access to use the account ourselves (President, Treasurer, Office Secretary). We also have a Swiss savings account mainly for the MMHV-project.
We had a German account, because it was easier for Markus to use
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“The mission of the IAVH is to promote homeopathy”.
• What can be the role of Europe: be an example how to tackle the problem (Sweden, Hungary, the Netherlands).