World Leprosy Day Report #1: What Is Leprosy?

World Leprosy Day Report #1

Leprosy is one of the most misunderstood sicknesses in the world.

Many people in the West think leprosy is a disease in which fingers and limbs fall off, is highly contagious, is incurable, and has been eradicated–if they think about leprosy at all.

We don’t recognize the many facts about leprosy because it rarely appears in highly developed countries. It may surprise many readers that about 200 cases of leprosy are reported every year in the United States. There are currently more than 3,000 cases of leprosy under active medical supervision in the U.S.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and other health care organizations refer to leprosy as Hansen’s disease. Much like a rose, however, leprosy by any other name is still leprosy and still carries with it the deeply imbedded stigma that has been attached to it for millennia.

Leprosy is a “a complex infectious” bacterial disease. The disease can be contagious, but is not highly contagious, and 95 percent of the global population is naturally immune to the causal bacterium, Mycobaterium leprae.

Left untreated, the bacteria can infect a person’s skin, eyes, mucous membranes and peripheral nervous system. However, leprosy can be cured with a multi-drug therapy regimen if discovered in its early stages, avoiding the long-term and most recognized effects of the disease such as open sores, loss of extremities and blindness.

Leprosy has a long incubation period, typically three to five years. In some cases, symptoms to those who have contracted the bacteria may not appear for up to two decades. While this makes it difficult to determine when and where the bacteria was contracted, it, nonetheless, provides doctors with a wide window of opportunity to correctly diagnose the disease. On the other hand, it may take doctors longer to diagnose leprosy, particularly in the West. Because of its rarity they are not looking for it during normal diagnosis protocols. The disease is typically correctly diagnosed only after a skin biopsy.


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