LEPROSY

Leprosy in India



Introduction

Leprosy is a condition known since antiquity: the first descriptions date back 600 years before Jesus Christ. For an unusually long time, and in many countries, it remained a disgrace because it was considered lepers, as if struck by a curse dooming them to isolation and social exclusion. Follereau was the one who denounced for the first time before the UN on the plight of leprosy patients confined in leper colonies (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002). Today, although the terror myth has not disappeared from some countries, it is estimated between 1 and 2 million the number of people worldwide who have contracted leprosy and require attention from the area where they live. Indeed, it is still prevalent in the tropics. In different foreign countries, leprosy is the result of imported cases of people who contracted the disease in their countries of origin. WHO approximated 700,000 new cases, each year worldwide and 2 million people suffer serious disability arising from disease (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002).

Leprosy, a disease as old as humanity, is a disfiguring disease of slow evolution bacillus leprosy or Hansen's bacillus. The disease is strictly human (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002). The clinical result is skin lesions, and mucous membranes and nerve damage causing paralysis, loss of sensitivity and mutilation of the extremities. Colonial Medical Corps is faced with this disease in all colonies, but especially in black Africa, held considerable endemic, he earned his greatest success. One name dominates the beginning of this battle: Marchoux who, in 1923, calls the humanization of leprosy. On his proposal is opened in Bamako a research on leprosy, which later bears his name: Institute Marchoux (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002).

In 1944, the fight against leprosy is reorganized for better coordination. For their part, surgeons Corps, and especially Carayon Bourrel, innovate and adapt surgical techniques to relieve the lepers, the developing leprosy surgery (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002). Nowadays, supranational bodies (and OCCGE OCEAC) continue in Africa's fight against leprosy, with the assistance of national doctors. WHO is coordinating the fight and each endemic country manages its campaign, which is financed, by charitable organizations. Currently, the introduction of multidrug therapy offers hope that this disease will gradually cease to be a public health problem (Bhattacharya, Vijayalakshmi, Parija, 2002).

Discussion

What is Leprosy?

Leprosy is an infectious disease of zero transmissibility when properly treated, but patients who receive no treatment, or this is inappropriate, they are a source of contagion. It may be caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae or Mycobacterium lepromatosis (Holden, 2009). Mycobacterium leprae were discovered in 1874 by the Norwegian physician Gerhard Hansen Armauer, due to which it is called Hansen bacillus, Mycobacterium lepromatosis is another bacterium that has many similarities with Mycobacterium leprae and was identified in 2008 at the University of Texas (Holden, 2009).

Historically leprosy was incurable, crippling and embarrassing, to the point that, among other measures, was enacted in 1909, on demand of the Society of Exotic Pathology, 'the systematic exclusion of lepers "and grouping them Leprosarium as a key measure of ...