Priorities for future of leprosy control

Leprosy Mailing List – December 8^th, 2010

Ref.:   Priorities for future of leprosy control

From: Gajete F, Manila, The Philippines

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Dear  Dr Salvatore,

I perfectly agree with Dr Vijay Pannikar (LML Dec. 5^th, 2010).  As the National Programme Manager for Leprosy in the Philippines, this scares me.  We are losing our experts and we are not prepared for this.  Even WHO Country representatives and WPRO Medical Officers cannot provide us from a pool.  It seems everybody is into Stop TB programme.

I have been working in leprosy since 1979 in one of the biggest Sanitarium in the Philippines called Dr Jose N Rodriguez Memorial Hospital or the Tala Leprosarium.  During that time when I started out as Training Officer, I was lucky to meet some of the Leprosy Experts who would come to look into our leprosy programme like Dr Felton Ross, Dr Rao and Dr Pannikar, among others, but later, we seldom were visited.  This hospital then was the training institution in leprosy for Asia, so that fellows from neighbouring countries would come for clinical exposure and rehabilitation training particularly in reconstructive surgery.  As the years went by, I noticed that leprosy experts in our country dwindled either thru attrition or sought out greener pastures.

We need to put up a Training Institute in the country.  One such institution capable of providing training is The Leonard Wood Memorial Research for Leprosy with its Staff whom we consider as experts, however, they just could not cope with the demand, human and facility resource-wise.  Although, American Leprosy Mission is funding its operations, I believe they need more outside assistance.

Another option is the programme conducted before wherein for every country there were four sent for training, these are representatives from the Province/City/Sanitarium to either Karigiri (South India), Nepal, Japan or Bangkok.  After their training, they train pool of trainers.  The Regional Coordinators who are doing well in their respective areas now were recipients of this WHO/Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation programme.

I hope ILEP could look into this so that our goal for the next 5 years that is empowering our primary stakeholders can be attained.  We can develop the professionals/skilled ones into trainers/health educators in leprosy to conduct basic orientation and self care patterned after Vietnam/Cambodia/Indonesia and Nepal.

I am really grateful that Dr Vijay Pannikar opened the doors for discussing this great concern for the future of global leprosy control programme.

Sincerely,

Dr Francesca Gajete

Philippines