We live in a society, where getting a disease causes a patient not only a physical pain, but also an emotional torture. Skin disease like leprosy attracts lots of unwanted attention. There a stigma attached with this disease and our society is not able to get rid of it from last so many centuries. One can never imagine the mental turmoil patients go through because of the discrimination. 

There are thousands and thousands of cases of leprosy in India. The total number accounts for about 60 per cent of the world’s nearly 2,14,000 reported cases every year. This number was released by World Health Organization in 2015. And still, many cases of leprosy go unreported in India. Social stigma is mainly to blame for these unreported cases.

Around 1980s, around forty lakh cases were reported from India alone. We have come a long way since. The government is trying very hard to curb these numbers. India is currently running one of the largest leprosy eradication programs in the world. It is called the ‘National Leprosy Eradication Program’ (NLEP).

But, those efforts by officials are not enough. The awareness about this disease, its symptoms, causes, available treatments and medicines need to spread in extreme rural parts of India. Even doctors also need to be educated thoroughly. There are still people who believe that leprosy is the God’s punishment for past birth’s sins. It will never be possible to eradicate leprosy unless and until we educate people in a scientific way.

The main problem is it usually takes more than 3 years for symptoms to appear after coming into contact with leprosy-causing bacteria. In some rare cases, people had not shown any symptoms at all until after 20 years. This huge time gap causes patients to take the symptoms lightly at first.

But, what most people do not know is that this disease is curable with multi drug therapy. If we look at the statistics released by World Health Organization, 16 million people from all over the world have been cured in last 20 years.

The sooner a patient is treated, the better. With government’s awareness programs and different schemes and our ability to educate people around us, we can save thousands of lives every year.