It's not like Eldar get any poison either outside of the scorpion lashsword And Orks only get poison from the painboy
I dunno about best ailment. Poison and Ablaze hardly seem with it, most of the time. EDIT: While I would like to see Hellfire rounds in the future, I think we have enough toys for the time being.
Which is what OP doesn't seem to realize yet So in the spirit of informing: The status ailments only reach dangerous levels once you applied so much that the application process itself already killed the target.
It does make a difference if you meet someone who is not at 100% Health, you got a chance that the ailment may kill that fella. On a 100% Health enemy, you take the same ammount of hits to down him
Now I won't claim that a melee Apothecary is anywhere near as effective as an assault loadout, but it has a unique advantage: You can take the Narthecium and a Chainsword (or Crozius Arcanum if you're a WP) and just spam attacks at the enemy, when one weapon breaks you can simply switch to the other.