Rebecca

Rebecca works as a practitioner in homeopathy and she has clinics in South Auckland. She has also worked over the past two years as a volunteer homeopath in Africa. She has a long history of travelling in Africa and recently joined a project in Tanzania with Jeremy and Camilla Sherr. Treating the full range of acute, chronic and infectious epidemic diseases, she has also taught homeopathy in Kenya.

“In a day I would see 15 – 20 patients through the clinic. Sometimes at some of the clinics you might have a queue of 24 but you’ve just got to get through them. It’s not an hour and a half consultation and a lot of them are follow ups. But if you have a new patient you take longer. But a lot of the time it’s repeating remedies if they’re doing well. You have to be quick and prescribe on the spot.”

More recently Rebecca spent time in Malawi working in remote areas with a Swiss organisation. “They wanted a homeopath that could teach homeopathy but also who could also cope with Africa because it’s very remote, no running water, no electricity, long drop loo and isolation. I can do that, so I did. So they had a 6 month full time course, it was a great model and they’d been doing first aid courses.”

“What has changed in my practice since Africa is that I’m working in a team. Often having 2 homeopaths in the room it is much more fun and we can collaborate. The patient comes to “us”. It’s really nice working in a team. So it’s not about owning the case. I like working in a team rather than working in isolation.”

“It’s so remote in Malawi and everyone walks, only a few people have bikes. So people walk to this clinic that’s being going for 15 years. They walk maybe 10 or 20kms carrying their sick relative or child.   So the idea is to push some homeopathic assistants out into the communities who can do the basics.”