Leprosy Contained

The known cases of leprosy have increased sharply in recent years.

This was good, not bad, news to 250 delegates from 51 nations assembled in Rome. It meant that leprosy victims, so long shunted into isolation or secret shame by society's ancient fear of the disease, are now coming forward voluntarily to disclose their ailment and seek treatment. Doctors, missionaries, social workers and others who have labored for years against leprosy hoped they had finally dented the wall of rejection and abhorrence that has forced most leprosy victims to live a stigmatized life.

One by one, the delegates read their reports to an international congress on leprosy sponsored by the Knights of Malta.* In Burma there were 2,000 known leprosy cases in 1951; now there are 30,000. In the Belgian Congo there are now 250,000 known leprosy victims, compared to only 60,000 a few years ago. In French Equatorial Africa there were 37,508 known cases in 1951; now there are 115,000.

Though leprosy is finally coming out into the open, where it can be treated and, in many cases, cured, there is still much to be done in breaking down the fears of those who hide their symptoms rather than risk ostracism from society. The best estimates place current leprosy cases in the world at from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000, but some experts suspect that there may be as many as 20 million victims, most of them living in the torrid regions of southern Europe, Asia, Africa and Central and South America. The disease has been virtually stamped out in the temperate zones (the U.S. has no more than 1,000 cases, one-third of them at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Carville, La. and Northern Europe only a handful).

Leprosy treatments have developed mostly in the past 15 years. Widespread use of sulfone drugs has made recovery increasingly common. Thousands of arrested and noncontagious cases are returning to a normal life in society. There is further hope that an experimental vaccine will prove capable of providing immunity.

The Rome leprosy congress was the brainchild of Frenchman Raoul Follereau, a professional charity worker who has devoted nearly half of his life to fighting the taboos associated with leprosy. Follereau, a roundish, energetic man of 52, has traveled 450,000 miles to visit leprosy victims, to convince them that their banishment from society is not condemnation to limbo, to encourage them to take treatments that can and will cure many.

Follereau abhors discrimination against leprosy sufferers. Said he last week: "They are less contagious and less dangerous than people suffering from tuberculosis. It is sinful and immoral to treat them like pariahs. They are, first of all, human."

*Since the 12th century, the Knights have made the assuagement and treatment of leprosy one of their principal activities.

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