Several fellow Indians have been carrying medicines from India as it is standard practice to eat Homeopathy or Ayurveda medicines for health maintenance, increasing immunity, treating normal cough and cold etc. We all know that most of these medicines are sold without prescription in India.
OFBJP family has come across cases where Indians were carrying these medicines innocently but were caught and fined by up to 1500 euro by customs department. In one particular case a fellow Indian had to go to court to plead guilty as SBL homeopathy medicines were considered as drugs. For this he had to spend 1000 euros on a lawyer which they had to find on very short notice. The letters from court were in Dutch and hence was not fully understandable which created additional panic.
We would like to share the lessons learned from all these cases as follows:
1. The Netherlands considers homeopathy and Ayurveda medicines from India as drugs or chemicals which are not approved by default.
2. If you need to carry such medicines, you need to get prior consent from your house doctor.
3. You must have an approved letter from your house doctor to carry such medicine clearly stating what it is medicine for which treatment. This needs to be written on letter head of the house doctor. A copy of this letter should be shown to customs, if you are asked with any questions. Be mindful that as most Dutch home doctors do not have knowledge of homeopathy and Ayurveda, they might not give such prescriptions easily.
4. Please note that Homeopathy is very popular in Germany and there are Ayurveda approved local Centre’s here in Netherlands and Europe.
Here are some feedbacks from a homeopathic practicing doctor in The Netherlands:
- As we all know that homeopathic medicines are dispensed either by Homeopathic physician or also give by pharmacist (on prescription or over the counter) and it is also very cheap in India, we tend to buy it in large quantities. But if it is only for your dose of a month or so and you are having it on a prescription from your doctor it is ok.
- SBL mentioned here is an Indian company with association with it’s French counterpart, you can get alternative for that in Europe and UK.
- Also there are several homeopathic physicians in all over the Netherlands. You can check for your homeopathic doctor on the website of NVKH. For more information you may contact at info@expatshomeoclinic.com.
Please create awareness on this so that no innocent fellow Indian suffers the pain of penalty, drug charges, court hearing etc. due to geographical differences in medical treatments.
Please share yours or your friend’s experiences so that everyone can benefit from it.
OFBJP Netherlands 