Park's Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine-19th Edition, 2007

Leprosy Mailing List, December 29th, 2008

Ref.: Park's Textbook of Preventive and Social Medicine-19th Edition, 2007
From: Vijayakumaran P, Chennai, India

Dear Mr Bhanot,
Leprosy is the only disease where large scale disease control measures have been very successful in reducing the burden though many aspects regarding the disease and M leprae are still remaining unclear. Expertise in leprosy (Medical and para-medical professionals) is becoming less as a result. Governments are relying on general health care system and Private Medical Practitioners for extending quality care to leprosy affected persons.
National disease control programmes have put in lots of effort to demystify fears and instil confidence not only among the public but also among the medical professionals. Many laws related to leprosy affected persons framed during pre-dapsone era are being repealed.
Professionals working in the field of leprosy in many parts of the world are still struggling to offer good quality services to leprosy affected persons. One would expect that a reputed medical text book as yours must aim at improving knowledge about the disease with right facts and help eliminate a problem. The amazing references in your text book are totally baseless. Hence this is disturbing and may even discourage medical professionals to join the task of eliminating the leprosy problem.

I strongly suggest that relevant (or rather irrelevant) parts of the text may be removed or modified.

Dr. P. Vijayakumaran,
Director (Prog), DFIT
Damien Foundation India Trust,
14, Venugopal Avenue, Spurtank Road, Chetpet,
Chennai 600 03, India