Monday November 15 1:42 PM ET
UN-led alliance hopes to eradicate leprosy by 2005
NEW YORK, Nov 15 (Reuters Health) -- Leprosy, which still afflicts nearly 3 million people around the world, could be eradicated by the year 2005, according to officials at the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO). They announced the formation of a 'Global Alliance' to eliminate leprosy within the next 5 years.
``Let us join hands and make a final push to consign a dreaded disease to history,' WHO Director-General Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland said today at the 3rd International Conference on the Elimination of Leprosy, held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Leprosy is caused by chronic infection with Mycobacterium leprae, which can lead to a gradual destruction of nerve cells, especially in the face and extremities. If left untreated, leprosy can result in blindness or disfigurement.
Drug therapy can cure leprosy. According to WHO, ``over the past 15 years, an estimated 10 million people have been cured of leprosy and the disease has been eliminated from 98 endemic countries.'
The newly formed Alliance will direct its efforts toward detecting and curing the disease in countries where it has not been wiped out. Those nations include India, which will chair the Global Alliance during 2000, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Indonesia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Angola, Brazil, Nepal, Ethiopia, and Madagascar.
Furthermore, the alliance will help raise awareness ``that highly effective multidrug therapy is available for free,' according to a WHO statement.
Non-governmental Alliance partners include the Nippon Foundation, the International Federation of Anti-Leprosy Associations, and the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which has pledged $30 million worth of leprosy medication to the effort over the next 6 years.
``We are most pleased to donate the... drugs needed to eliminate the disease,' Daniel Vasella, chairman and CEO of Novartis, stated.
Brundtland said WHO ``is grateful for the strong support of our partners, both old and new, in the final years of the fight against leprosy.'
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