Wales Foundation For Integrated Health
The Wales Foundation For Integrated Health is also known as The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health. This was considered a controversial charity that was run by the Prince of Wales and created in 1993. The Foundation began to promote alternative medicine and lobbied for the inclusion into the National Health Service. However in 2010 after many allegations of fraud and money laundering which lead to an arrest of a former official the charity was closed.
Prince Charles created the charity in 1993 to explore how complementary therapies could work with mainstream medicine. The Foundation’s medical director was Mike Dixon. Between 2005 and 2007 the foundation received a grant from the Department of Health to help organize the regulation of complementary therapy. The controversary around the charity was that Charles had shown in interest in alternative medicines. And his promotion of it caused controversy. In 2004 the Foundation put a divide in the scientific and medical communities over the campaign to encourage general practioners to use and offer herbal and other various alternatives to treatments to National Health Service patients. Then in 2006 Charles made a speech to health ministers at the World Health Assembly in Geneva to urge them to develop a plan to add alternative medicine therapy to conventional medicine. In 2007 the foundation received a great deal of funding from the Prince’s Charities Foundation and an additional £300,000 grant from the Department of Health.
In 2010 there were accounting discrepancies noticed by the auditor and were reported to the Metropolitan Police and Specialist Crime Command. Two former officials were arrested for fraud that was believed to total £300,000. Following the closing of the foundation many individuals and organizations launched a new organization called the College of Medicine, which was also supported by the Prince of Wales.