The team is in the city to acquire first-hand knowledge of the cancer treatment being offered at the Prasanta Banerjee Homoeopathic Research Foundation (PBH RF). It includes clinical oncologist Dr Natalia Eres and Dr Montserrat Assens Mampel — both from Barcelona with backgrounds of homoeopathy and acupuncture, now working on a special project on cancer and homoeopathy. Also present in the team was Asuncion Pastor Caurtero from Valencia, the founder member of a popular web portal for cancer support that get about 1,000 hits a day. PBHRF is collaborating with oncologists in Spain to assist them with treatments of cancer. According to Banerj, the PBHRF treated about 30 new cancer patients everyday. “ If follow up cases are included, then the number goes up to150 cancer patients everyday,” said Banerji.

During their stay in Kolkata the team interacted with cancer patients at PBHRF and made certain interesting observations. “In Spain, most of the cancer patients who come for homoeopathic treatment usually switch to homoeopathy after conventional treatments or to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. But here patients who have never been treated for cancer are using homoeopathy,” said Eres.

PBHRF and the university of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA jointly conducted an in vitro cancer study on the effectiveness of medicines Ruta 6 and Calcarea Phosphorica 3X in destroying brain cancer cells and stimulating new cells.