Leper treatment trend

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32562, 23 March 1971, Page 14

Leper treatment trend

The people of Asia still believed that leprosy was a curse sent by their gods to punish them, and those infected with leprosy were ostracised, said Miss M. E. Titheridge, Christchurch area secretary for the Leprosy Mission, yesterday. Miss Titheridge, who recently returned from a tour of leprosy hospitals in Indoesia, Thailand, Nepal, India and Hong Kong, said that the Leprosy Mission and other similar organisations were trying to educate people in these areas to accept leprosy as one of the many diseases that could be cured.

But it was not only in these countries that people were so ignorant about leprosy.

“Although certain forms of leprosy are contagious, most cases are not infectious, especially after treatment with drugs, and consequently the general trend in treating leprosy cases is to integrate them with other people so ■that they will not be ostracised when they are cured,” she said. Signs of this trend were evident in the gradual decrease in the number of patients at the leprosy hospitals. “At the McKean rehabilitation centre in Northern Thailand, where there were

once between 600 and 700 patients, there are now only about 300, and the same has happened at Purulia Hospital in East Bengal,” she said.

“Patients with non-infect-ous leprosy, instead of being kept in the hospitals, are sent out into villages,” said Miss Titheridge. “Not only is this cheaper for the mission, as there are fewer beds to maintain, but it also means that patients can keep their land and their friends.” Those kept in hospital were the burnt-out cases, who were very badly deformed as a result of leprosy, and the contagious cases, Mjss Titheridge said. In Thailand, Miss Titheridge visited the Manoram Hospital, which is run by the

Overseas Missionary Fellowship and is supported by the Leprosy Mission. At Manoram attempts were being made to integrate the patients in the leprosy 'Wing with other hospital patients. The Thai Government had also made it law that control work of leprosy must be emphasised, which meant that mission workers had , to go out into villages and examine everyone for leprosy, she said.