Family doctors are prescribing fewer prescriptions for homeopathy than they were two years ago, new figures reveal. The number of prescriptions for homeopathic preparations dropped from 83,000 in 2005 to 49,300 in 2007, statistics from the Prescription Pricing Authority show.

The drop occurred against the backdrop of an increase in the overall number of prescriptions written, from 720 million in 2005 to 796 million in 2007, suggesting that doctors are shunning homeopathic remedies due to the lack of evidence that they work.

Homeopathy involves diluting in water or alcohol substances that could otherwise be poisonous. The Prince of Wales and the Queen are known supporters of the practice, but scientists say that homeopathic solutions are diluted so many times they are unlikely to contain any active ingredients at all.

There are five NHS homeopathic hospitals: in London, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and Tunbridge Wells, which continue to treat chronic conditions such as asthma, eczema, migraine, allergies and depression.

But local NHS Trusts are cutting back on homeopathic services, with a quarter stopping or reducing funding for the treatments over the past two years — Tunbridge Wells Homeopathic Hospital is due to close in eight months.

There are 400 medical GPs who are regulated by the GMC and are members of the Faculty of Homeopathy, providing treatments to about 200,000 NHS patients.

But the cost of homeopathic prescribing by GPs has also fallen by 46 per cent in two years, Pulse, the medical newspaper, reports.

The total spend in 2007 was just £321,000 — just 0.006 per cent of the total prescribing budget — compared with £593,000 in 2005.

Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School in Exeter and a vocal critic of homeopathy, said that the huge drop in prescribing reflected a shift in attitude within the medical profession.

“The figures reflect a more critical attitude on homeopathy and a shift towards evidence-based medicine. The trend is bound to increase as the evidence that homeopathic remedies are pure placebos is getting stronger,” he said.

Professor Ernst was among a group of 13 senior doctors who wrote to NHS Trusts in 2005 urging them to fund only therapies that were backed up by scientific evidence.

But Dr Tim Robinson, a GP who provides a local homeopathic service in Dorset, said that the decline reflected an orchestrated “hate campaign” against homeopathy led by such critics.

“Patients are not asking for it because of what has been written in the press and this also reflects the disillusionment of medical homeopaths with the system and cuts in funding from PCTs,” he said.

Homeopaths believe that homeopathy can help with any condition which the body has the potential to self-repair, but a review of clinical trials of homoeopathy published in The Lancet medical journal in 2005 concluded that the treatments had no more than a placebo effect on patients.

However, advocates say the treatments can provide comfort and hope to patients where conventional treatments are unavailable or do not work.

Melanie Oxley, of the British Homeopathic Association, said: “There's been a ten-year decline in the number of prescriptions in the UK but we have not got to the bottom of why that should be. However, the homeopathic hospitals provide 55,000 appointments per year, and this situation has not perceptibly changed over the last two to three years.”

Richard Hoey, acting editor of Pulse, said: “In this era of evidence-based medicine, homeopathy was always going to struggle to survive. But it will be interesting to see how the Government attempts to reconcile cuts in homeopathy with its obsession with patient satisfaction. Homeopathy may not work, but patients certainly seem to like it.”

The official NHS Choices website, which acts as a guide to patients, states that homeopathy should not be used in place of conventional medical treatment, but only as a complement to it.

“Serious acute or life-threatening conditions such as heart attack, stroke, diabetic coma, epileptic seizure or asthma attack should not be treated with homeopathy,” it says.

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