Re: (LML) Competent leprosy services

Dear Pieter,

The picture painted by Dr Jaison is more or less the same even here in Nigeria. Although Nigeria  detected 2892 new cases of Leprosy in 2015, the skills among health workers has seriously declined. Less than 10% of the countries total health work force can accurately diagnose and treat Leprosy jncluding Leprosy complications conclusively. This of course is a source for concern. The famous Leprosy Hospitals are managed with young Doctirs who have no experience in Leprosy case managment and mnagment of Leprosy complications. Even the National TB and Leprosy Training center has no specialist Dermatologist or Surgeon that can take care of complications of Leprosy. The few very experienced Leprosy Doctors are either on retirements or about to retire. No funds allocated for training the young ones. ILEP partners are doing their best but are faced with dwindling financial incomes from their donors. Governments have and still continye to see Leprosy services as donor projects. For how long this will continue is a subject of discussion for the technocrats in Leprosy world. There is no better time than now to engage Governments at all level to face the challenges of declining quality of Leprosy services in the developing countries and especially in my country. This must be done and must be initiated now.

Tahir

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 5:04 PM, Pieter Schreuder <editorlml@gmail.com> wrote:

Leprosy Mailing List – December 12,  2016

Ref.:   (LML)   Competent leprosy services

From:  Jaison Barreto, Bauru, Brazil

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Dear Pieter,

 

Thanks for the writings "competent leprosy services" by Joel Almeida of December 10, 2016.

 

What we have seen in the last 10 years in Brazil about leprosy:

Progressive destruction of reference centers, with more and more leprosy cases being misdiagnosed as rheumatism, allergy, mycosis and other diseases!

 

No more leprosy in-service-trainings for health professionals were stimulated by the last government. The international leprosy organizations went away from Brazil, causing a catastrophic condition as the physicians, who are in the field and stay in the same municipality for one year or less, do not receive training in leprosy anymore. At universities they learn almost nothing about leprosy. The material available in internet works only for those that were trained in service at least a little bit. Fear and prejudice is still high in our country.  

 

I have been in the field many times in the past 10 years, training health professionals to suspect and diagnosing leprosy cases. I have trained as such more than 10,000 new professional, with funds from GLRA and Fontilles. Unfortunately, those ILEP members left our country. More than 1000 leprosy patients were diagnosed during these trainings. In areas were GLRA/Fontilles worked the detection did not fall, but the number of grade 2 disabilities found among new cases were extremely low compared to other areas not covered by this training program.

 

During the last government, professionals who worked in the field, like me, training other colleagues and finding several new cases, were put under pressure in Brazil, as leprosy elimination goal should be reached, even by lies and false statistics.

 

Thanks God that now we have a new government in Brazil, where our Ministry of Health and the new National Leprosy Coordination is trying to recover our country from the destruction of the National Leprosy Program left by the last government.

 

I am sure we will really eliminate leprosy, in decent time, not by statistical lies and with misdiagnosis, but by training all health professionals, finding all active leprosy cases and treating them, breaking transmission chain and doing the household contact follow up.

 

Regards,

 

Jaison

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LML - S Deepak, B Naafs, S Noto and P Schreuder

LML blog link: http://leprosymailinglist.blogspot.it/

Contact: Dr Pieter Schreuder << editorlml@gmail.com

 

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