By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

A TOP natural medicine practitioner criticised the government yesterday for “not seeking input” from alternative medicine practitioners before drafting and debating in Parliament a “vague” Bill to amend the Medical Council Act.

Dr Kevin King’s statements came as some parliamentarians dismissed “bush medicine” while others praised the Bill.

Fort Charlotte MP Andre Rollins was among those who criticised elements of the Bill, which calls for an Act to revise the regulation of medical practice in the Bahamas.

The “Medical Bill 2014,” according to Health Minister Dr Perry Gomez, “is needed for the Bahamas Medical Council to ensure that qualified medical practitioners provide quality care to residents who live, work and do business in the Bahamas.”

Under the Bill, he said, for the first time the Medical Council could register people for “special purposes,” including telemedicine, alternative medicine, stem cell therapy and research, advanced medical therapy and research.

A resident had told The Tribune recently that he filed a complaint with the police and the Medical Council, accusing Dr King of practising without a licence and of prescribing treatment that caused his son’s skin condition to worsen.

Dr King said the incident highlights why alternative medicine practitioners need to be regulated by a recognised body so those qualified to practice would not have their legitimacy questioned and those unqualified would not be allowed to do so.

Dr King said he has long advocated that alternative medicine be regulated by a “board of people with like minds, not people who don’t know anything about alternative medicine.”

He said that regulation of the alternative medicine industry “extends beyond being registered by a Medical Council” and alternative medicine practitioners are “philosophically opposed” to those who engage in traditional medical practice.

“If you look at the US or Canada or New Zealand, all of them have their own division of alternative medicine not encumbered by a Medical Council. They have their own regulatory board,” he said.

He said a Bill he drafted in 2003 and presented to parliamentarians since that time speaks to “unscrupulous persons coming into the country and doing damage.”

“Why hasn’t the government accepted the Bills that we put forward for natural medical practitioners?” he asked. “It prohibits people from coming in hosting seminars at hotels and selling pie in the sky dreams that never come true while taking revenue out of the country. It prevents people that never went to school from opening up a shop. There are lots of companies out there giving natural medicine a bad name.”

Dr Rollins charged that the “Bill has no reference to best practices or evidence based treatment,” adding that stipulations are needed to ensure doctors are “scrupulous” and are not allowed to get away with making false claims about their practice.

He also said discrimination should not be institutionalised in the Bill whereby foreign medical practitioners could advertise their businesses in the Bahamas, but Bahamian practitioners cannot do so.  

Dr Gomez had said that under the Bill “a medical practitioner or specialist shall not advertise the services to be provided by him or by any group or organisation with which that medical practitioner or specialist is directly or indirectly associated; make any representation, graphically or otherwise, or engage in or permit any act or behaviour, that may or is intended to attract business unfairly or that can be reasonably be regarded as advertising or canvassing.”

Likening this to “discrimination”, which he said also characterises casino gambling in the country, Dr Rollins said Bahamians should be allowed to do what foreign practitioners can.

Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell was among the parliamentarians who praised the Bill. “This is a reforming statute in that it brings into the modern era, the medical act which will be repealed which is some four decades old. It defines the practices of medicine, the types of doctor’s licences.  It says how you can be licenced and what the standards are for licencing. Section 22 (5) is especially interesting in that it provides for the new modern specialties which would not have existed forty years go: telemedicine and stem cells. You have an obligation to have an annual licence in Section 30; each year on the 31st December, the licence expires. So under this regime for the first time, you have two types: the general licences and its various categories and then there is the specialist licence.”

Debate about the Bill is expected to continue on May 7th.