A Chinese medicine practitioner has been reprimanded after a patient complained she'd been told her bowel disease could be cured by injections of pig intestine cells imported from Germany, and that she would die young if she stopped treatment.

The woman notified the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia in January 2010 after her condition, ulcerative colitis, had not been cured and requests for compensation failed.



The woman also alleged the practitioner had failed to protect her privacy, failed to keep proper patient records, failed to label medicine bottles, and that she'd been told her bowel disease would lead to death as a result of bowel cancer if she stopped seeing her.



The complaint was the only ever to be lodged against Essendon-based Ah Choo Teo, who has been registered to perform Chinese medicine and acupuncture therapies since 2003.

Based on Mrs Teo's own admissions, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal recently handed down a decision making findings of professional misconduct and unprofessional conduct involving communications she had made to the patient and practice administration.

