GENERAL SECRETARY REPORTS

SECRETARY FOR ARCHIVES
Dr. Alberto Soler Medina (Spain)
No report received.

General Secretary for Public Relations Dr. José Matuk Kanan (Mexico), General Secretary for Pharmacy Dr. Amarilys de Toledo Cesar (Brazil), and General Secretary for Education Dr. César Luis Cremonini (Argentina)

Secretary for Education
Dr. Cesar Luis Cremonini (Argentina)

During this year having had the experience of the previous periods, all of our efforts were oriented toward the necessities of those who really were interested in the Minimum Basic Program for Education, so:

1. We sent the program to 22 persons that during the meeting in Amsterdam asked for it, no one even answered.
2. We went to Cuba, invited by the Committee for Homeopathy of that country to deliver some papers and to try, during the meetings, to make them understand the necessities of standardizing the Program of Education following the Minimum Basic Standards and a plan of continuous evaluation. We have been invited to repeat next year a new meeting to evaluate results.
3. As Liga Education Secretary, we have been invited to participate in a meeting during the Bahia Congress to discuss the Abilities and Competence of the Homeopathic Doctor in order to cover specific goals such as standardization of homeopathic schooling, continuous evaluation, etc.

As in our previous experiences, we repeat, of trying to get each Vice President to respond to the Minimum Basic Program of Education, it was again a failure. Even when we pretended they understood the Minimum Basic Program intended to safeguard the particularities and differences inherent to each formative entity with regional and particular problems and that the Liga is only working to reach international standards, not ignoring the multiple problems that such a plan could bring each school, this was so.

So for the next period we will try to continue supporting those few interested in a better homeopathic education. Maybe when the results of implementing a more complete program can be seen this will awake the interest of other countries. Meanwhile we have to understand, as I said in my previous report of this year, that some homeopaths still continue with the idea that the best Education is the “Guru like” education with no plan at all, or plans of “week-end terms” education (of 20 to 30 hours), twice a year in most of the cases, adducing that thus we search for the “best education,” not for hours of education, forgetting that no one can learn anything, much less homeopathy, without covering a Minimum Basic Program. Additionally, of course, one needs measurable criteria and instruments of continuous evaluation. In doing so, we continue just as it was a hundred years ago, and so, even when we know that this way never will give homeopathy the academic status that it deserves. Moreover, we know that it will never give to doctors who come to it, the guarantee of a good foundation. Instead, we serve personal interest of the “Gurus” or schools and our egoistic desires of not “loosing” time from our offices. Anyhow, homeopathy is magic, or, maybe with the lies and dreams that are sold in the weekend courses, we believe so. Some day we will have to wake up from this dreams and give homeopathy what it deserves.


Secretary for Pharmacy
Dr. Amarilys de Toledo Cesar (Brazil)

Increasing the participation of pharmacists in the LMHI and enhancing the study of the homeopathic remedy is our objective. The second Pharmacy Forum will lead us to the next, in Budapest. The project on the nomenclature of remedies was presented and it is part of the International Homeopathic Compendium. A questionnaire proposed by Dr. Torres Garcia gave us only one answer (Dr. Stúrová, from Slovak Republic) and will be sent again to the NVPs. A new Brazilian commission among homeopathic pharmacists, physicians, veterinarians and dentists has to deal with whatever affects the homeopaths, related to remedies. The II Brazilian Homeopathic Pharmaceutical Congress occurred in Rio, last April, with 400 pharmacists. Friedrich Dellmour (Austria) and Jack Hendirckxs (Belgium) were talking about the Quality of the Homeopathic Medicine. A preliminary text for the Consumer’s Manual was presented, aiming to inform the population about the homeopathic remedy. A requirement signed by 275 German homeopathic physicians for revision of the German Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, was presented at the Congress. For the future it is important that measures to improve the quality of the homeopathic remedy be carefully considered. Good homeopathic remedies, prepared from original well-known sources, through standardized methods, are an important guarantee for the future of classical Homeopathy.


Secretary for Public Relations
Dr. José Matuk Kanan (Mexico)

The Internet domain name of the Liga web page address has been http://www.lmg.org. That domain name was registered with no authorization (stolen) from us, by Healing Arts, an Internet company. They intended to charge us a lot of money to give us back our name, so we decided to use another domain name, which is: https://lmhi.net. The registration has been made in the Unites States by a company named NET WORK SOLUTIONS. The company who had stolen the name, wanted a price for it but in communication with all the Executive Committee we declined as we did not like that. The politic to take the names of important organizations, then, blocked the information of our pages because they are the “owners”. In the Internet any person can have the right to buy a name if this one does not have registration. They buy for a long time and after that the companies or the organizations need to buy their own names. For this reason we changed the domain name of the page, for https://lmhi.net and we pay the registration in Internet, and the owner of the name is the Liga. One could have registered the Webpage name through “.com” (commercial), or "gov" (governmental), but those choices did not seem appropriate. The Executive Committee, therefore, decided to go with registering with NetWork Solutions for “.net.”So we have resolved this problem. The name of the page is now https://lmhi.net. We have paid the rights to Net Works Solutions and the name belongs to the Liga Medicorum Homeopathica Internationalis. So this is our history, what in reality happened.

In a big undertaking, we have rebuilt this page to make it more useful. Now you can have direct communication with more than 30 persons of the International Council and the Executive Committee, by their email address. We are still working on the history of the homeopathy throughout the different countries, but we have not finished yet. We have only the 25% of the countries. The National Vice Presidents have still to send me the histories, so we ask again for this information.

We have made two more address books for the committees of the Liga Executive Committee and International Council, and sent them to all by mail, thus helping the National Vice Presidents to have the new information of the names, addresses, telephone numbers and faxes from all the world . Now we have added a National Vice President for Venezuela, and a Representative for Portugal, and changed some address for the National Vice Presidents. With every communication by their e- mails, the list of e-mail addresses is growing so we hope for the future to keep these addresses. In very short time, we will have a lot of information available, by the Internet page of the Liga.

We have supported the publicity for the Congress in Brazil through the page of the Liga, making a Link with the page of Brazil. Now we will do the same with the future Congress. The next one, will be in Hungary, and we are making the link with their page.

I feel my work is not enough so, the next project will be to help the national vice president to give information to the new members by means of a tri-fold flyer.

In our country, Mexico we are working hard and now we have the Official publication of the FARMACOPEA HOMEOPATICA NATIONAL, printed by our government . This has been a very big step in our country. This reconfirms the action of the government for Homeopathic Medicine, Mexico was the first country who had the official recognition. We are working hard in this way so this will be support for other countries and we hope this will be useful for everybody.

The official recognition of our Post Graduate school is another step in our country, too.

We request all of the National Vice Presidents and Representatives to make the Annual Report of their activities with the same format to be most useful for everybody. (see box)

We hope to have all of the histories before this year finishes, in order to make a small magazine with a contemporary history of homeopathy in the world for the new millennium.

We are working to increase the communication between us so please help us as soon as possible.

Waiting for your information, thank you in advance.

[Ton, the following needs to be formatted in a set-aside box - smc/cmc]

Secretary for Research
Dr. David Riley (USA) Former General Secretary for Research

Research in complementary and alternative medicine in general and homeopathy in particular continues to increase. Several original research articles have been published in the conventional medical literature during the past year.

In the English language literature two articles stand out, the first was a survey of homeopathic physicians by Drs. Jacobs, Chapman, and Crothers comparing the practices of homeopathic MDs and DOs with conventional medical doctors. It should come as no surprise that homeopathic physicians prescribed less conventional pharmaceutical products, ordered fewer diagnostic tests, and spent more time with their patients. This survey was published in the Archives of Family Medicine as part of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) focus on complementary and alternative medicine during the month of November 1998. The Archives of Otolaryngology in August of 1998 published the results of a clinical conducted in Germany on the treatment of vertigo. Vertigoheel was shown to be equally effective to betahistine, a commonly prescribed conventional medication in Germany.

The Office of Alternative Medicine at the NIH has been upgraded by the United States Congress to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Their budget has also been increased to $50 million for this fiscal year. Hopefully the various academic centers that are funded
by the NIH will begin to conduct a variety of clinical trials on homeopathy.


Secretary for Veterinary Medicine
Dr. Sergio Canello

The number of owners using homeopathy for their dogs and cats is increasing in Italy, but this increase is not very significant. In fact, the number of homeopathic vets is variable because of the difficulty of the homeopathic method. So, unfortunately, there is a constant number of vets leaving this form of medicine and, often, the new colleagues take simply the place of the former vets. So the total number of the operators is not clearly increasing.

The veterinary LMHI members are less than 10. This ridiculous number is principally caused by the chronic trend of the Italian vets to work alone and not in a team.

Most of the colleagues use human products, but there are more than three laboratories making specific products. The homeopathic teaching is not part of veterinarian University programs, but some Universities, as Padua, organize some seminars and classes about homeopathy.

Several vets are invited to those seminars, and I am often one of them.


*Report from the General Secretary
Dr. Ulrich Fischer (Germany)

According to the statutes of the LMHI the General Secretary is responsible for the administration of the association and the preparation and the execution of the meetings. He shall draft the minutes of the meetings and shall forward copies of the Minutes to all National Vice-Presidents. Additionally, the General Secretary shall maintain relations with the national institutional members.

1. Relation to the administration of the association: many written correspondence concerning the archives of the LMHI, the LMHI website, addresses of homeopathic MD’s worldwide, the duties of the National Vice Presidents, the elections and minutes of the Executive Meeting in Amsterdam, the LMHI Congress of Salvador de Bahia and others had to be answered.
   
   
2. With the collaboration of the Officers in the Executive Committee and the Organizing committee of the Salvador de Bahia Congress the meetings of the Executive Committee and the International Council were prepared and executed.
   
   
3. With continuous and regular communication (often daily e-mail contacts) between the members of the Executive Committee the following matters were discussed, resolved or put in practice: the new Statutes and Procedures of the LMHI, research projects, the Internet page of the LMHI, promotion of the LMHI in the different member countries and others.
   
   
4. LMHI Archives: After successful negotiations between the responsible authorities of the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin in Stuttgart and the General Secretary of the LMHI, the Archives of the LMHI were moved from London to the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin in Stuttgart, Germany. The institute is the most important German library for history of medicine and keeps the valuable homeopathic volumes from Samuel Hahnemann and Clemens von Boenninghausen, plus patient records and many other books and letters from the founder of homeopathy up to the present. With a one time payment of DM 7.500, the institute agreed to do the following: maintain our archives free of charge, have them available for public viewing, develop a system for scientific registering and systematizing of the documents and papers according to certain titles, and prepare the material for later scientific studies. From now forward all upcoming relevant data concerning the LMHI will be filed in Stuttgart and will be accessible to everybody.

Address: Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Straussweg 17, 70184 Stuttgart, Germany
                 phone: , fax:
                 E-Mail:


Report by the Treasurer
Dr. Ton Nicolai (the Netherlands)

Summary of the financial report 1998

The LMHI (paying) membership raised from 6,062 in 1997 to 6,541 in 1998. Over the last 5 years the LMHI membership increased more than 75%.
Four new countries joined the LMHI, i.e. Estonia, Portugal, Slovenia and Sri Lanka.

The 1998 expenditures included the following:

• secretarial expenses and expenses for economy travel and three nights’ hotel stay for the Liga annual business meetings (Executive Committee and the International Council meeting)
• secretarial expenses of the other Executive Committee members
• newsletter (2 issues); design, editing, printing and mailing
• special Portuguese/Brazilian issue of the newsletter
• lawyer’s fee for establishment of new statutes/procedures
• accountant’s fee
• expenses surrounding the Executive Committee and International Council meeting
• website maintenance
• taxes, bank charges and commission
  and amounted up to CHF 116,843. (CHF = Swiss Francs)

The 1998 income included the following:

• membership dues
• dividend, credit interest
  and amounted up to CHF 80,697.

This means a net deficit of CHF 36,146 for the year 1998. The LMHI assets decreased from CHF 389,269 on 31 December 1997 to CHF 353,123 on 31 December 1997.
In 1998 the LMHI continued to use its reserves. This is due to the International Council decision at Capri (1996), because of the then high unnecessary financial reserves, for a temporary decrease of the membership dues from CHF 15 to CHF 10 per (association) member per year.


Estimate for 1999
The 1999 expenditures will amount up to CHF 124,604, the receipts to approx. CHF 77,000. That means that the LMHI will have a net deficit for the year 1999 of approx. CHF 47,604 and that the LMHI assets will continue to decrease. At the 1996 International Council meeting it was decided that the membership dues are to be raised again in the future, as soon as the LMHI assets reach a critical limit.