Priorities for future of leprosy control

Leprosy Mailing List – December 11^th, 2010

Ref.:   Priorities for future of leprosy control

From: Revankar C R, New Delhi, India

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Dear Dr Noto,

This has reference to LML December, 5th, 2010 on Priorities for future of leprosy control by Dr. V. Pannikar.  I thought of writing my personal views on this important topic.  I agree with the views expressed by Dr. Pannikar.

Having reached a major mile stone in reducing the total number of cases and curing a large number of patients, we all are facing a major challenge of mobilizing resources to address several post leprosy elimination issues such as continued disease transmission, drug resistance, reactions and nerve damage, disability prevention and care, social stigma, human rights sustaining leprosy control services and political support etc.

Several other competing diseases of public health importance with high morbidity and mortality rates such as malaria, TB, HIV etc and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 2015, one would expect that funding for leprosy and other neglected tropical diseases might not be available as we expect both from the governments and external agencies.  Along with this, available expertise (old & young) also started diverting to adequately funded health programmes/projects.

In this current scenario, we may have to :-

(1)

mobilize funding from other than leprosy agencies;

(2)

develop integrated approaches along with other programmes wherever possible (eg. integrated neglected tropical diseases control; TB/Leprosy combined activities; leprosy drug resistance studies with antimicrobial resistance studies; linking ocular leprosy problems leading to impaired vision to "Vision 2020" programme, disability care into CBR etc).

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Regards,

C R Revankar

New Delhi