This week, India observes National Pharmacovigilance Week — a time when the focus turns to monitoring, reporting, and improving the safe use of medicines.
Pharmacovigilance, at its core, isn’t only about catching side effects. It is about cultivating vigilance, accountability, and a culture of continuous learning in medicine.
In homeopathy, we often pride ourselves on safety.
We say, “Homeopathy is safe.”
We believe it. We’ve experienced it.
But here’s the uncomfortable question: how many of us are trained to actively look out for things that can go wrong?
Recently, I came across an article that lit a spark in me. It wasn’t about proving whether homeopathy “works” or not — instead, it made me reflect on something far deeper: our own responsibility as practitioners to notice, record, and respond to unexpected reactions when they occur.
Because “safe” doesn’t mean “silent.”
Even in homeopathy, patients may occasionally experience symptoms they didn’t have before, aggravations that don’t settle, or strange new reactions that don’t quite make sense. These aren’t failures — they are opportunities to observe, learn, and protect our patients better.
If we want homeopathy to be taken seriously — not just by our patients, but by the larger medical community and regulators worldwide — then we must step up and create a culture of ethical, transparent safety monitoring.
Now, I know what you might be thinking.
Opening up this conversation — shining a light on adverse events in homeopathy — might feel like opening a can of worms.
What if we do notice that patients sometimes experience unexpected reactions?
What if this shakes the very belief we’ve taken pride in — that homeopathy is gentle, safe, and healing?
What if it sabotages all the good work we’ve been doing for years?
Yes, it can feel scary.
But here’s the truth:
Our first promise is to our patients.
Our second is to our system.
And staying true to those promises means being honest, vigilant, and open. It means trusting that by doing this hard work — by documenting, learning, and improving — we don’t weaken homeopathy.
We make it stronger.
This isn’t about questioning homeopathy.
It’s about strengthening homeopathy.
That’s why I am starting a new series on my website: Ethical Homeopathy. Through this series, I hope to explore themes like patient safety, monitoring unexpected reactions, responsible clinical reporting, and how we, as a profession, can align with global standards of accountability while staying true to our principles.
For now, I’ll leave you with this thought:
Patient safety is not a weakness in homeopathy. It’s our chance to grow stronger, more respected, and more future-ready.