Pakistan is the first country in the region to achieve the target of leprosy control and also fast on its way to the elimination of the bacterial disease.
Dr Ruth Pfau, a key figure in the fight against leprosy for more than 60 years, while talking to the media said that the country had successfully managed to maintain its leprosy control status for the past 21 years.
While admitting that leprosy elimination was being achieved in the country, she pointed out that elimination was not the end of the disease.
“It must be remembered that the incubation period of the disease is comparatively long and it usually takes about three to five years for symptoms to appear after coming into contact with the leprosy-causing bacteria,” she said, adding that some people do not develop symptoms until 20 years later.
Leprosy’s long incubation period, she said, made it very difficult for doctors to determine when and where a person with leprosy had initially been infected.
“This demands that people across the country do away with the stigma attached to the disease. The tendency to ostracise the sufferer must be efficiently curtailed so that people may approach doctors without any fear or apprehension,” she stressed.
Accompanied by Dr Ali Murtaza and Mervyn Lobo who are both also actively engaged in Leprosy eradication efforts, Dr Ruth Pfau also urged the authorities to adopt a country specific leprosy eradication strategy developed by the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre.
The health experts said that there were also many challenges in terms of physical and social rehabilitation of the affected people, which would go on even in the post-elimination phase.
Attributing the achievement of gradual elimination of leprosy in the country to the concerted efforts by a team of committed workers, they said that since the inception of the leprosy eradication programme, more than 56,780 leprosy patients were registered in 157 Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centres.
Of these patients, 99% were said to have completed their treatment and 88% were confirmed to be fully recovered, they added.
MALC Executive Council Member and Incharge of the TB/Blindness Control Programme Dr Ali Murtaza said that currently there are no more than 531 leprosy patients under treatment.
“400 to 500 new leprosy patients are registered every year in different parts of the country and are treated free of cost,” he added.
“It is, however, feared, that there may be around 2000 people across the country affected by the slowing growing Mycobacterium Lebrae bacteria that causes Leprosy,” he said.
The speakers also mentioned that World Leprosy Day 2017 is being observed on Sunday and that the World Health Organisation under its four-year leprosy eradication strategy has sought zero transmission, zero disability and zero discrimination.