Fw: Ref.: (LML) Ending the neglect

 

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Leprosy Mailing List – September 9,  2021 

 

Ref.:  (LML) Ending the neglect 

 

 

From:  Joel Almeida, London and Mumbai 

  

 

Dear Pieter and colleagues, 

 

What is life like for persons who have experienced HD (leprosy)? They speak:

https://youtu.be/3eeOCdxlVJk 

 

Human rights lawyers have approached a High Court with a Public Interest Litigation in an attempt to end the neglect and exclusion. That is great work. 

 

Even non-lawyers can make an important contribution to respecting human dignity, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We can do this by replacing public misinformation with reliable and scientifically accurate public information. For example, persons with PB (paucibacillary) HD are nearly all non-infectious even before treatment. Giving them anti-microbials makes no difference to the risk of new HD cases among their household contacts. Nobody need fear these individuals. They merely happened to be exposed to concentrated viable bacilli shed by unprotected but anergic patients. 

 

We could ensure that no anergic patient in an endemic area remains unprotected against reinfection by HD bacilli after 12 months of MDT. Not only would that show respect for these patients, but also it would allow us to end reinfection and so end transmission reasonably rapidly. It would also spare them a 600% increase in the risk of the painful, swollen nerves of ENL neuritis. We can do this. 

 

Joel Almeida

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

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

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

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