c. 1999 Religion News Service
UNDATED _ Leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, infects about half a million people annually, according to the World Health Organization.
About 1 million people suffer permanent disabilities from having had the disease.
Researcher G.A. Hansen identified leprosy’s cause in 1873 as the mycobacterium leprae. Victims suffer skin lesions and nerve damage. Because they cannot feel pain from burns or injuries, they often fail to seek medical treatment until parts of their bodies are permanently maimed.
WHO expects leprosy cases will drop to less than 1 per 10,000 people worldwide by the year 2000 due to the use of a multi-drug therapy, which has already decreased the caseload by 85 percent since 1985. But rates will remain higher for some time in endemic countries like India, Indonesia, Myanmar (Burma), Bangladesh, Brazil and Nigeria, according to Dr. Vigay Pannikar, acting team coordinator of WHO’s Leprosy Elimination Project in Geneva.
Only about 50 to 60 leprosy cases arise in Europe each year, and most patients were actually infected in endemic countries, Pannikar said. About 300 leprosy cases are recorded annually in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Leprosy is believed to be transmitted person-to-person via respiratory droplets, but”leprosy is the least contagious of all communicable diseases,”and many people are completely immune, Pannikar said.
Ancient documents of China, Egypt, India and Israel tell of leprosy, though often the term was used to describe various, unrelated skin diseases. The biblical book of Leviticus said lepers must live outside the community, going about with torn clothes and disheveled hair and crying out,”Unclean, unclean.” A handful of leper colonies remain in scattered locations across Europe, mainly for people maimed from past infections, but Pannikar said the strict quarantines of lepers were never justified.”We would like lepers to be treated in a general hospital,”he said.”Leprosy is very easy to diagnose and it’s very easy to treat.”DEA END SMITH
