THE HAGUE - Former Minister of Health, Environment & Nature (GMN), SuzANNE Camelia-Römer (PIN) is on the longlist for the 2020 Master Kackadoris Prize, which means that she has been nominated for this year's Quack Prize. Camelia-Römer is under the spell of Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, the Association against Quackery reports. The prize is intended for "institutions, persons or companies that have contributed significantly to the dissemination in deed, word or writing of quackery in the Netherlands".

For example, in 2018 she attended a WHO workshop on Chinese medicine in Macau and last year, accompanied by several officials and her husband, she attended an Ayurveda workshop. The latter country has a separate ministry of alternative medicine called Ayush. The second congress was devoted to the "standardization of diagnosis and therapy in Ayurvedic medicine, in the Unani system and in the Siddha medical system".

Both workshops looked at how the various health care systems can best be integrated and included in the basic care package. This integration is welcomed by the WHO, which is heavily influenced by China.