Not everyone feels leprosy can be licked by 2005

The Third International Conference on Elimination of Leprosy closed in Abidjan on Wednesday with less than unanimous acceptance of the year 2005 as target date for wiping out the disease, according to information from the meeting. (According to the World Health Organisation, leprosy is considered eliminated in a given country if the number of cases falls below one for every 10,000 persons.) Notes published from a roundtable discussion at the conference showed that some delegates did not accept the target date because they did not see it as realistic. Some felt that activities such as rehabilitation needed to be continued after the year 2005 and that long-term fund-raising activities might be damaged by setting a target date. Others were more optimistic. “We are going to win by the year 2005,” Dr Ebrahim Samba, WHO Regional Director, told delegates on Wednesday. The Chairman of the Conference, in his closing remarks described the meeting as “a great, maybe last opportunity for us to seriously tackle the problem of leprosy. “We know better now what the problems are and what to do,” Professor Cairns Smith of the Department of Public Health at Aberdeen University, Scotland, told delegates. Recommendations made by various working groups set up at the conference included calls for increased political commitment through advocacy targeted at all political levels and effective integration of leprosy into the general health services. Leprosy patients and the communities they live in should be empowered by supporting the formation of pressure groups and leprosy-patient platforms, the conference recommended. Leprosy, delegates said, should be included in the basic training for medical and health workers, effective feedback and monitoring are needed, and active community involvement, particularly by women and existing organisations like service clubs and youth groups, is necessary.