Alternative medicine New federal regulations offer legitimacy to some nontraditional treatments

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Alternative medicine

New federal regulations offer legitimacy to some nontraditional treatments, but

lack of coverage means not everyone can afford them

Chris ZdebThe Edmonton Journal

Monday, January 05, 2004

 

 

 

 

 

EDMONTON - Pam Kachowski is battling bladder cancer. She is fighting it with

everything she can. Traditional doctors see her every three months to laser off

any new tumour growth. She is taking Peruvian herbs, better known as Cat's Claw,

which enhance the immune system. An alternative medical therapist administers

vibrational beam ray therapy, an age-old treatment, to stimulate or neutralize

individual cells in the body to reduce Kachowski's pain and increase her energy

level. It costs $150 per treatment, when she can afford it.

 

Because beam ray therapy isn't covered by her health plan -- massage therapy is

the only alternative therapy that is -- Kachowski must pay for it out of pocket,

something that isn't easy when you're a social worker, a member of the working

poor and raising three boys on your own.

 

The beam ray therapist figured Kachowski would need six or eight sessions.

Kachowski stopped at four after running out of money.

 

Her friends rallied around and held a fundraiser in November, which raised

$2,500 so she could resume her alternative therapy.

 

She credits beam ray therapy for relieving an overall soreness and tiredness,

side effects of the cancer, allowing her to work all day and function into the

evening. Before this therapy, Kachowski says her body would begin shutting down

as early as 10 in the morning.

 

She has had her fifth beam ray treatment since the fundraiser. She sees the

cancer specialist in 10 days to see how she's doing, though two days before her

beam ray therapy her body was starting to feel the symptoms of the tumour again.

 

Kachowski says she wishes alternative therapies were covered by medical plans to

the same degree as traditional medicine.

 

" I think we all have a right to choose the form of health care we desire, " she

says. " I think more and more people are becoming aware of the fact that

alternative treatments do have some value and some worth.

 

" And as far as I'm concerned, if it works, then who is to say that it's right or

wrong just because it's not in the realm of treatment that we recognize?

Alternative therapy is just different. It doesn't mean it's not good, it just

means that it's different, " Kachowski says.

 

In many cases, such therapies date back thousands of years in certain cultures,

and North Americans are simply rediscovering them, she adds.

 

The problem is that alternative therapies are eyed with suspicion by a society

weaned on traditional treatments and prescription drugs. Only 10 to 20 per cent

of the population has tried nontraditional treatments, some because traditional

medicine has failed them and others because they don't like using man-made

drugs.

 

The reluctance of more consumers to go natural stems from the fact that they are

uncertain what natural health therapies involve and what natural health products

contain, and they wonder if therapies and products are safe and if they actually

do what they claim to do.

 

Public concern about natural health products prompted Health Canada to introduce

the Natural Health Products Regulations, which kicked in Jan. 4 with a

transition period ranging from two years for site licensing to six years for

product licensing.

 

On the provincial front, Alberta Health is readying regulations under the Health

Professions Act that will rope in, under one umbrella, 30 self-governing health

professionals including chiropractors, accupuncturists, dental hygienists,

optometrists, pharmacists, traditional Chinese medical practitioners and

naturopaths. Nine of the professions are currently being regulated. The rest

should be regulated by mid-2005.

 

New regulations affecting naturopaths are expected to take effect late this year

or early 2005 and will require the naturopathic college to register its

professionals, investigate and resolve complaints and discipline practitioners.

 

Such regulations are already in effect in Ontario and Saskatchewan and, more

recently, British Columbia.

 

Richard Nowazek, president of the Alberta Association of Naturopathic

Practitioners, is certain more Albertans will try alternative medicine once

these regulations come into effect because they will feel protected.

 

He expects private insurance companies to increase their level of coverage for

alternative therapies from the current $300 to $500 annually, and for Blue Cross

to begin covering natural medical treatments as it does in other provinces with

regulations.

 

Christianne Dubnyk, a spokesperson for Alberta Health, says there are no plans

at this time for Blue Cross coverage to extend to herbal medications or

alternative therapies, because there is little published data available on their

effectiveness and the cost would be prohibitive to a system already staggering

under traditional health costs.

 

Which is why consumer advocate Wendy Armstrong, a volunteer with the Consumers'

Association of Canada and a board member of Pharma Watch, a consumers group that

monitors pharmaceutical promotion, isn't jumping up and down in support of the

new provincial regulations.

 

" In the absence of some kind of universal public plan to hold down the cost of

these practitioners, regulation can just be another big barrier that will drive

up the cost of these nontraditional therapies and reduce the number of therapies

they can do, " Armstrong says.

 

" The reality is private employer-sponsored benefit plans are already in a

position of seeing their premiums rise and their coverage drop because, over the

last 10 years, so many things that used to be covered under the public plan,

when they were provided in a hospital setting, are no longer covered. "

 

Armstrong's other concern is the promotion of prescribed and nontraditional

therapies when the safety of these products depend on them being given to the

right person, in the right dosage, at the right time, for the right thing.

 

" It belies the caution people need to have around prescription and

nontraditional therapies, " she says.

 

Nowazek says there are 60 regulatable naturopaths with training similar to a

medical doctor's in the province and another 20 claiming to be naturopaths, who

won't meet the requirements of the new regulations.

 

He welcomes the regulations because they will ensure consumers receive approved

therapies from people qualified to do them, Nowazek says.

 

As with traditional treatments, there are no guarantees natural therapies will

cure someone, though they do excel in preventive medicine, but the combination

of the two is working for her, Kachowski says.

 

When one medical doctor suggested her prognosis was not very good, Kachowski

shot back that she refused to become a statistic.

 

" I'm going to be one of your patients who lives through this, " Kachowski told

him.

 

" I know (the bladder cancer) is going to go away. With what I'm doing there's

not a doubt in my mind. "

 

czdeb

 

© Copyright 2004 Edmonton Journal

 

 

 

 

 

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