Is leprosy elimination goal realistic?
(E)
Some two million people around the world are disabled as a result of leprosy. Multidrug therapy was introduced by WHO in 1982 as the key to eliminating this disfiguring and debilitating disease. In their public health review, Diana N.J. Lockwood & Sujai Suneetha find that this therapy has helped considerably towards eliminating leprosy worldwide but left gaps where the infection has not been adequately controlled by antibiotics alone. They conclude that leprosy should be treated as a chronic rather than acute infectious disease and that its treatment should be integrated into general healthcare systems in countries where that has not already happened. (in: WHO Bulletin, March 2005)
