The health board wants to close in-patient facilities

NHS Greater Glasgow is due to discuss their future at its board meeting on Tuesday.

The closure of 15 overnight beds is intended to save �300,000 and is part of a range of measures to cut �58m from Glasgow's health spending this year.

Doctors at the hospital said the overnight beds were vital in treating severely ill patients.

Complex cases

They claimed that closing the beds to help fund a modernisation programme would be a false economy.

Patients would have to be treated elsewhere in the NHS, probably with expensive prescription drugs, they said.

We should be proud of developing this unique service - we are doing work in Glasgow that cannot be matched anywhere in the UK Patrick Harvie, Green MSP

The basic principle of homeopathy is that like cures like.

Experts claim that an ailment can be cured by small quantities of substances which produce the same symptoms.

The Glasgow homeopathic hospital is the only one in the UK able to look after patients 24 hours a day and tackle complex cases which are not responding to conventional medicine.

The hospital has been praised as a role model for combining conventional and alternative medicine within the NHS.

Health Minister Malcolm Chisholm, who visited it earlier this month, said that he thinks the hospital provides an excellent model of care.

Green MSP Patrick Harvie said he would be joining the hospital's supporters in presenting a petition to board members.

He said: "I have called for the Centre for Integrative Care to be saved - indeed for its funding to be increased - because of the excellent work being done there and the profound impact on patients' lives.