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Leprosy: A Medical Update...
After the Annual Mass last September Dr Colin McDougall gave a talk entitled "Leprosy in India" which also included a survey of the current position worldwide. The significance of India is that it has by far the greatest number of registered cases of Leprosy and also the largest number of undetected cases.
As we have reported several times before, the incidence of leprosy has been dramatically reduced; the disease can be cured and if found early enough there will be no deformities and cured people can return to a normal place in society. In the period between 1960 and 1980 there were estimated to be between 10 and 12 million sufferers. In early 1999 the total of registered cases was 834,988 but of these 577,200 were in India. Second is Brazil with nearly 73,000 and then Indonesia with 23,000.
This dramatic drop is due to Multi Drug Therapy which is estimated to have cured 10.7 million since 1985. The drugs are made up in blister packs with variable dosage according to the severity of the attack and with lower amounts for children. Treatment is six months for lesser number of bacilli up to twelve months or more for patients with multi bacilli. A cure is final and complete with an extremely small number of relapses.
Today the problem is how to eliminate the disease, (eliminate means less than 1 case per 10,000 of the population). So far the number of countries where leprosy is a public health problem (another way of expressing elimination) has dropped from 122 to 24 and of these 12 are likely to fulfil the criteria of elimination by the end of the year 2000.
This does not mean that we can be complacent because there are estimated to be 1.5 - 2.0 million undiagnosed cases today. The major effort is now to find these cases and get them treated.
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Directing you to the St Francis Leprosy Guild Website, thank you for your patience.
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