My patients, relatives and friends are regularly sending me messages asking about the veracity of the role of Camphora 1M or Arsenic Album 30 as preventives for COVID-19.
Regarding the message circulating about Camphora 1M, it is not a fake message, the Pune police force have been given this remedy as a preventive. Bajaj Auto with its large presence in Pune, are distributing it to their staff.
Regarding the message circulating about Arsenic Album 30, yes, it was recommended in end of January by our AYUSH ministry and the Central Council of Research in Homeopathy.
I believe that now, in middle of May, groups of homeopathic physicians are in talks with the government, regarding distributing of this remedy to the Mumbai Police Force.
Different doctors have suggested different things – how many suggestions are we going to follow?
In Pune, they’re using Camphora 1M, in Mumbai they’re planning on giving all police force Arsenic Album 30.
In Italy, Camphora did not work as preventive. In Iran it may have.
Would a remedy work as a preventive?
There is a group of about 10-12 remedies that we are finding useful to treat the Covid symptom picture. Different strains of the virus may be creating different intensities of the problem, also, the patient’s own state of health, presence or absence of co-morbidities, is very important in determining how Covid affects the person and to what extent it creates complications.
A remedy would work as a preventive on someone, if that person was going to develop that same kind of picture when affected by Covid. A remedy with a very different picture would not work.
Hence it gets difficult to say what remedy can be used as a sure-fire preventive in a large population where there are individuals of all different levels of health.
For eg., Camphora is known to be able to treat a condition where the patient is in a state of collapse, where vital functions are shutting down, etc. Hence, for those people who have a poor state of health, co-morbidities, high risk individuals, etc., it might work as a preventive IF those people were going to manifest a Camphora picture when they caught the COVID infection. On anyone else, it may not work.
Similarly, different remedies would work as preventives on different members of the population… it would be incorrect to say that one or two remedies would work as preventives for entire populations.
If and when someone were to start developing symptoms, that is the best time to start homeopathic treatment to nip the infection in the bud, which can be done, when the picture the patient develops can be matched with the corresponding remedy.
Hope this helps!