Vatican calls on world leaders to combat the “forgotten disease”

World leaders were urged by the Vatican on international World Day of Leprosy to develop and reinforce the strategies necessary to combat this “forgotten disease” of which there were 210,000 new cases diagnosed last year.

President of the Pontifical Council for Healthcare Ministry, Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, called for educational and awareness-raising campaigns to help those affected and their families to emerge from isolation and to obtain the necessary treatment.

“In all epochs and all civilisations the fate of people with leprosy has been that of being marginalised, deprived of any kind of social life, condemned to seeing their own bodies disintegrate until death arrives, ” Archbishop Zimowski said in a statement.

He praised the efforts of those who work “to ensure that negative attitudes towards people with leprosy have been overcome, promoting their dignity and their rights and at the same time a more universal love for neighbour.”

The countries that are most afflicted by leprosy are in Asia, South America and in Africa.  India has the highest number of people with the disease, followed by Brazil.  Numerous cases occur in Angola, Bangladesh, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nepal and Tanzania.

The cure for leprosy or Hansen’s Disease works through the administration of multidrug therapy (MDT) over a number of months.  In the 1970s Cork-born scientist, Dr Vincent Barry synthesised a compound called Clofazimine that forms an integral part of the multi-drug therapy, and cures the disease.  Since the 1980s, this medical treatment has been responsible for curing fifteen million people.

According to Rev Ken Gibson, Head of the Leprosy Mission in Ireland, the oldest and largest care agency for those suffering from leprosy, the challenge for those working to alleviate the problems of leprosy sufferers is to break the cycle of poverty in which leprosy thrives and which creates fear and stigma around the disease.
“That is the heart-breaking thing about leprosy.  People don’t come forward early enough because they still live in communities where people fear it and banish them,” he said.

“The greatest challenge we have in leprosy is not the distribution of medicines, but in public education and health education so that we can drive down stigma and the suffering it brings to those affected,” the Presbyterian minister explained.

The Leprosy Mission CEO has just returned from India where he and a group of 20 Irish students spent two weeks building homes for leprosy sufferers in Vadatharasalaur in Tamil Nadhu.

The Leprosy Mission was founded in Monkstown, Co Dublin in 1874 by Irishman, Wellesley Bailey after he encountered a number of leprosy sufferers in India.

by Sarah Mac Donald