Prince Charles told the World Health Organization's annual assembly in Geneva that alternative medicine should be used alongside modern treatments.
The prince believes that the best approach to healthcare is by combining the best of both complementary and modern medicines to get "the best of both worlds". He has been encouraging integrated healthcare in the United Kingdom for many years by working with the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.
"It is tragic, it seems to me, that in the ceaseless rush to modernize, many beneficial approaches, which have been tried and tested and have shown themselves to be effective, have been cast aside because they are deemed to be old fashioned," he said.
“We have maintained a dangerously fragmented and abstracted view of our world which has led to the abandonment of a great deal of valuable traditional knowledge and wisdom.” said the Prince of Wales “As a result, we are beginning to reap the harvest we have sown through living off Nature’s capital rather than her income,” he later added.
“For the past 24 years I have argued that patients should be able to gain the benefit of the ‘best of both worlds’ – complementary and orthodox as part of an integrated approach to healing,” said the prince.
He later added that integrated healthcare could help to create a “powerful healing force for our world.”
“I believe, modern medicine needs to accommodate a more integrated and holistic approach.”
The prince also warned that the destruction of habitats around the world could result in the loss of “vital life support systems” for future generations.
“If we poison and pollute our earth, we poison and pollute ourselves.”
Earlier in the week, a group of eminent doctors had criticized the UK governement's spending on alternative medicine. The state-funded NHS includes spending on homeopathy, medical treatment with water so diluted that no molecules of the active agent remain - and for which studies show the treatment to be ineffective.