Supreme Court notice to Centre on plea over homoeopathy medicine for Covid-19
Cyriac Abbey Philips and three others including a former homoeopathy practitioner petitioned the Supreme Court over the Ayush ministry guidelines issued on January 29, 2020.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday sought the Centre’s response on a petition seeking immediate prohibition of a homoeopathy medicine prescribed by the ministry of Ayush as preventive medicine against the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19.
The petition filed by a leading doctor Cyriac Abbey Philips along with three others said that the medicine, Arsenicum Album 30, has been prescribed as an antidote against Covid-19 by the Ayush Ministry in its guidelines issued on January 29, 2020, without conducting any clinical test or trial.
This has become the basis for state governments to approve this medicine for use as an “immunity booster”. In Kerala, the petition said, the Kerala government has even approved administering the medicine to children.
A bench of justices Vineet Saran and Aniruddha Bose issued notice on the petition to the Union ministry of Ayush, Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH) and Kerala government. The bench posted the case for the next hearing after eight weeks.
The petition, argued by senior advocate Anand Grover, said, “In traditional homoeopathy, Arsenicum Album is used for two conditions, gastrointestinal disease and to treat arsenic poisoning. According to the Ayush guideline, the drug has been prescribed for Influenza-like illness (ILI) recently and in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was chosen as the prophylactic.”
As per the Centre’s advisory, one dose of Arsenicum album 30 has been prescribed daily on an empty stomach for three days as prevention against Covid-19. The guideline suggests that the dose should be repeated after one month in case Covid infections prevail in the community.
Besides Philips, the other petitioners include a former homoeopathy practitioner, a teacher of physical medicine and rehabilitation and a healthcare documentation analyst.
“Although clinical trials are required to be done when the drug is repurposed, with respect to its efficacy and for safety, no such trial was conducted. The guidelines by Ayush ministry do not show that any study has been done. All studies registered in the clinical trials registry related to Arsenicum Album and Covid-19 are not completed. Therefore, the guidelines are arbitrary, violative of Article 14 and Article 21,” the petition said.
It also questioned the mass scale prescription of the said medicine by the Kerala government. “The homoeopathy medicines by their very nature are proclaimed as “individualized” and cannot be distributed for mass consumption as the Kerala government is doing,” said the petition filed through advocate Prashant Padmanabhan.
Since the different state governments are drawing power from the Ayush ministry Guidelines, the petition sought its withdrawal and an immediate prohibition on use of Arsenicum Album 30 for Covid-19.
The petitioner earlier approached the Kerala high court claiming that Arsenicum Album 30CH distributed in Kerala can cause serious, irreversible, and irreparable harm to children. The high court allowed the petitioner to move a representation to the Centre. Cyriac Abbey Philips challenged this order in the Supreme Court which is already pending and separately moved a representation to the Centre in October last year.