CONSCIOUS HEALTH
Complementary Medicine
Regulation and Risks While Australians want more of what’s natural in health care, the authorities continue to disbelieve the many obvious benefits. MARTIN OLIVER reports
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round 70 per cent of Australians take supplements or complementary medicines.
“UNDER-EMPHASIS ON PREVENTION MEANS THAT SUBSTANTIAL PREVENTATIVE HEALTH BENEFITS AND SAVINGS COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES CAN OFFER ARE OVER-LOOKED”
Natural therapies are increasingly popular in Australia, and although accurate figures are hard to come by, they are accessed by well over half the population. They are gentle, frequently effective, and treat the whole person. Yet, as their popularity continues to grow, they are meeting growing resistance in some quarters. Elements of the Australian media have taken on the role of attempting to turn public opinion against complementary therapies by repeating ad nauseam a number of questionable key messages, the most common being that these therapies are “useless”. For their part, Australian health authorities tend to dismiss the value of natural therapies in a similar fashion. This is reflected in a lack of Medicare coverage for natural therapist consultations, and an exclusion of complementary medicines from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. 22 CONSCIOUS LIVING MAGAZINE
Furthermore they are generally excluded from hospital settings, in contrast with a country such as Germany where allopathy and naturopathy are used side-by-side, in a successful example of integrative medicine. Instead there is a singleminded focus on the hospital and pharmaceutical paradigm, to the degree that in 2014 the Abbott Government attempted to abolish the National Preventative Health Agency. The aim was to achieve savings that would probably have been outstripped by downstream expenses caused by increased ill health. Such under-emphasis on prevention means that the substantial preventative health benefits and savings complementary therapies can offer are overlooked.
REGULATE – OR NOT?
In 2010, when the current national regulatory framework for health practitioners was drawn up under the Australian Health Practitioners
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Regulation Agency, all natural therapists were excluded with the sole exception of Chinese medicine practitioners. Because “unregistered” health practitioners, natural therapists in New South Wales and South Australia are subject to state-based codes of conduct that may later be extended in the form of a single national code. Despite much of the industry keen to be regulated, health authorities are holding off taking this step for the time being. Similar to other areas that the federal government declines to fully regulate such as organic food and free-range eggs, there are some commonalities. In each case, the product is viewed as “alternative” in some way; the industry itself is lobbying to be regulated; lack of regulation gives rise to some negative media coverage, and confidence in the sector is somewhat diminished as a result. Because this lack of regulation also makes it harder to achieve a good level of quality control, membership of an appropriate professional body is SUMMER 2016