THE Fianna Fail spokeswoman on health, Mrs Maire Geoghegan Quinn, called yesterday for the regulation of alternative health therapies. This follows an inquest in Dublin on Thursday which was told that a Co Donegal woman died last October after taking a herbal remedy as well as a conventional one.
Mrs Geoghegan-Quinn called on the Minister for Health to give the Irish Medicines Board the power and resources to police the area of alternative medicine, and to establish a register of alternative medical practitioners.
"It was a mistake on the part of the Minister not to include this area of medicine in the board's rem it when he recently introduced legislation abolishing the National Drugs Advisory Board and established the Irish Medicines Board," she said.