A country experiences an annual epidemic. Despite a vaccination programme thousands catch the disease and some die each year.
A bold plan is implemented: the people are given a homœopathic remedy at the beginning of the season. Few people catch the disease and none die.
Cuba implemented this plan in 2007. Cuba has a yearly leptospirosis epidemic. It happens during the hurricane season when there is flooding and water pollution. Many are left homeless, and severe damage is done to sanitary and health systems.
Leptospirosis is an infectious bacterial disease transmitted to humans from rats (and other animals). It is caused by bacteria of the genus Leptospira. In humans it causes a wide range of symptoms including high fever, severe headache, chills, muscle aches and vomiting, and may include jaundice, red eyes, abdominal pain, diarrhoea or a rash. Left untreated the patient can develop kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure and respiratory distress.
Up until 2007 a leptospirosis vaccine had been distributed. During that year a sharp rise in the leptospirosis epidemic occurred in three provinces of the eastern region of Cuba, causing the authorities considerable concern. The authorities produced a homœopathic remedy using the four circulating strains of leptospirosis. As a preventative, two doses of the remedy were administered 7 to 9 days apart to some 2.4 million people in the affected area. It was a massive undertaking, with an estimated 95% uptake.
Two weeks later there was a dramatic decrease in reported cases and no subsequent deaths of hospitalised patients. The number of confirmed cases remained at very low levels for the rest of the season, defying the usual upward trend of the epidemic as the season progressed. In 2008 the programme was repeated at the start of the season, with no deaths and less than ten cases in any month.
Dr Conception Campa Huergo and her team at the Cuban Carlos J Finlay Institute are to be congratulated for having the vision, courage and belief in homœopathy to do what homœopaths have known since Hahnemann first used it in a scarlet fever epidemic in 1799 - homœoprophylaxis works.
Monty Firmin