Homeopathy Papers

Village Mobile Clinics and Mass Treatment with Homeopathy

Written by Rachael Mutinda

How do you treat 200 patients in one day at a rural mobile clinic? The author describes the approach and the challenges.

No doubt the beauty of Homeopathy lies in its individuality of treatment. But if Homeopathy is to move into the popular mind it has to be flexible and able enough to treat en masse.

It’s exciting to go onto a successful village mobile clinic. Generally these are run with ALCMN homeopaths, student interns and volunteers. A well advertised clinic may attract anywhere from 30 to 200 patients. We are committed to attending to all of them. This may mean that we are working straight into the evening.

Most patients are in acute disease states and coming to our low-cost mobile clinics looking for a quick answer. To that, we are confident that at least 75% of our patients get some satisfaction from treatment. Hopefully they are inspired to return to our permanent base clinics for further treatment.

To treat quickly, we use several approaches. When there’s a line of patients waiting for you, you need to do a lot of thinking “on-your-feet” so to speak. Instead of an hour long patient-led consultation where you let the patient ramble as long as they like, you need to quickly get to the core issues, and learn to ask pointed questions that will complete the CLAMS for the case. Some of you may remember this mnemonic, that summarizes a complete symptom picture: concomitant, location, aetiology, modality , sensation. When this is combined with familiarity of KEYNOTES, you can usually get to a suitable remedy in the few minutes you have with the patient. We also make great use of complex remedies and epidemic-style treatment. Also, nosodes are very useful to “kick” an acute case, which we then follow with a symptomatically correct remedy.

Sometimes, when there are a large number of patients, or it’s the first time at a school or orphanage, we separate the patients and treat whole groups together. “All kids with ringworm – over here!” “All malaria cases, please line up here”, and so on. Then we can simply move down the line with the selected epidemic remedy, and get on with it quickly.

Visiting volunteers from abroad are sometimes freaked out at the thought of mass treatment with homeopathy. They’ve never imagined that homeopathy could be used in such a way. I can remember one clinic which had been advertised on the radio. Over 300 people showed up. Our young homeopath-volunteers were in a state of shock and found it impossible to help. In fact, they wanted to return to Nairobi. There were only two of us plus the two shocked volunteers. We had to call in a few more of our own Abha Light practitioners to rush in, support the team and finish the job.  Most volunteers ultimately find it an experience to remember and grow by. They come away with a new respect for the versatility of homeopathy.

Abha Light students cut their teeth on mobile clinics. It is a way to quickly learn how to capture a case and learn the remedies. It builds confidence, because in the follow-up clinic, you find that these simple cures actually worked. Most patients get cured and spread the word to others.

That’s another benefit to doing these clinics. It’s a way to make homeopathy known and popular to the public. The mobile clinics are relatively cheap to run, so we can get into a community to see if they like us. Later, a graduating student may be able to open his or her permanent clinic in that place.

About the author

Rachael Mutinda

Rachael Mutinda DHom (ALCNM), ND, DRefl, AcuTech, KSoH -
Rachael has been a homeopath for 7 years, and is a graduate of Abha Light College of Natural Medicine. She is an instructor and supervises intern students from ALCNM. Her clinic at Kibera slum, in Nairobi.

1 Comment

  • I am very interested in the article on Mobile Clinics as I am hoping to set up something similar in a rural area in South Africa. I am a recent graduate and would also be interested in doing voluntary work at the clinics to gain practical experience. I would apprecaite being put in touch with the author.

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