| A MASSAGE FROM THE SPECIAL AMBASSADOR |
| Reaching the Unreachable |
| We are continuing our special focus on India for this issue. In
India, there were 473,658 new cases of leprosy in 2002,
amounting to 76 percent of cases worldwide. The numbers
prompt experts to say, "If India fails at elimination, we will all have
failed."
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| The task of finding patients from all strata of society in all
regions of the country and providing a cure − in a country with
more than a billion people and over 100 languages − isn't an easy
one. |
| Beyond the medical issues, social stigma is also a serious
problem in India. The deeply rooted stigma attached to leprosy has
made many of the leprosy-affected in the country nearly
unreachable. |
| To overcome these barriers, efforts have focused increasingly
on broadening the base of trained people who can look throughout
the country for new cases. One example is the integration of
leprosy services into General Health Services, with village health
workers now going from home to home. Another example is the
promotion of communication through school education. As
explained in this issue's Report From India, schoolchildren are
taking home simple drawings of the human body, on which they
record any skin blemishes of family members and then bring the
reports back to school. |
| These steady efforts are having a strong cumulative effect.
More people are being reached than ever before. Still, new groups
of people with no awareness of the cure are continually being
discovered. Due to issues of language, geography and social
structure, these groups are proving hardest to reach with the
message that leprosy is curable. But until India has reached all of
these people, we cannot say that we have succeeded. And without
an awareness of the curability of the disease, there will remain
many affected people who are reluctant to come forward to be
examined. We must encourage people to visit nearby health
centers when they find patches on their skin. For that, the
messages, "Leprosy is Curable,""Free Treatment is Available," and
"Social Discrimination has no Place" must be delivered to all strata
of society. The challenge we must not fail to meet is how to reach
the unreachable both with these messages and with the cure. |
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