TREATMENT OF LEPROSY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27435, 23 August 1954, Page 12

TREATMENT OF LEPROSY

RESULTS OF USING B.C.G. VACCINE The anti-tuberculosis drug B.C.G, may produce immunity from leprosy according to Dr. H. Windsor Wade,! world authority on this disease, g. formation has reached the Uev. Murray Feist, the New Zealand see* retary of the Mission to Lepers, of i * first mass test of this drug, made ii * the Sao Paulo district in Brazil. In this experiment, 1300 leprosy contacts were vaccinated with B.C.G. ant 3000 were not vaccinated. Ten o| those vaccinated, or .56 per cent, de. veloped the disease and even these had only a mild form. Of the 3000 not vaccinated, 150, or 5 per cent., de* veloped the disease —or 10 times mon than those vaccinated, and m thefr cases the leprosy had not taken the mild lorm. “The vaccine, of course, is not tna£ and cannot be expected to wipe cat the disease,” says Dr. Wade. “It doa appear, however, that it offers renl hope in reducing the incidence *rf the disease. I hope that by the next time the International Congress on Leprosy meets—in India in 1958—we will have a real answer. More work needs to be done with 8.C.G.” Dr. Wade, president of the International Leprosy Association and editor of the association’s official publications, is a pathologist doing ad* vanced research work at the CuHon leprosy colony in the Philippinesthe largest in the Pacific.