The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : State committed to eradication of leprosy: Minister

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 16, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

State committed to eradication of leprosy: Minister

Staff Reporter

5,503 patients in Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu is committed to total leprosy eradication and is rapidly marching towards that goal, Health Minister Thalavai Sundaram said.

At present, there were 5,503 leprosy patients in the State but the prevalence had come down drastically from 108 cases for every 10,000 people in 1993 to 0.85 now, he said.

He was inaugurating the Regional Conference on Leprosy here on Sunday.

The two-day conference was organised by the International Association for Integration, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA), the Leprosy Elimination Alliance (LEA) and the Hindu Kusht Nivaran Sangh (HKNS) and supported by the Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation, Japan.

India still had the highest number of leprosy patients in the world but would achieve the World Health Organisation (WHO) target of total eradication by the year end, the Minister said.

Migrant population

All north eastern and north western States had eradicated leprosy but Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal continued to grapple with the problem as they did not have much health infrastructure, Dr. Dhillon, Deputy Director-General, Health Services (Leprosy), Government of India, said. Delhi and Chandigarh too had the same problem due to their migrant population.

The annual Central allocation for leprosy was Rs. 22 crores, he said.

The right to health was a fundamental right and total leprosy eradication was hampered by the lack of accessibility to health services for many people, D.R. Karthikeyan, former Director-General, National Human Rights Commission, said.

Discrimination

Terming discrimination on the basis of leprosy a human rights violation, Yohei Sasakawa, WHO goodwill Ambassador and president of the Japan-based Nippon Foundation, said though 100 million leprosy-afflicted people had suffered such discrimination till now, the United Nations' Human Rights Commission did not take any action till now.

In March, the U.N.'s 26th sub-commission had done a survey on such violations and the report would be submitted in August.

Though drugs and treatment were available totally free of cost, nine countries including India, Nepal, Brazil, Madagascar, Tanzania, Central Africa, Mozambique and Angola had not achieved total elimination and the Nippon Foundation was providing $ 150 million annually for the global fight against leprosy.

S.K. Noordeen of LEA, P.K. Gopal of IDEA India and T. Kirubakaran of HKNS-TN, also spoke.

The conference would take stock of the current leprosy situation with special attention to problems faced by the leprosy-affected people in socio-rehabilitation, gender problems and legal issues.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu