Top 15 Facts on Leprosy / Hansen’s Disease

What is Leprosy / Hansen’s Disease?

Leprosy or Hansen’s disease is a chronic infectious disease which affects skin and peripheral nerves. It causes disfiguring sores and nerve damage, making the symptoms quite disturbing to anyone who does not know how the disease is spread and progresses (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Leprosy

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leprosy symptoms are faded and discolored patches or lesions, thickening, dryness or stiffness of certain areas of skin, loss of sensation in the affected area, muscle weakness, vision problems and possible blindness, bleeding nose, nasal congestion, and foot ulcer (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
Signs and Symptoms

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Leprosy Health Facts

1. Although leprosy does not pose a grave public threat it is endemic to certain parts of the world and there is still a lack of awareness about the disease. To better address the spread of infection and contain and treat the disease it is important for us to have a better understanding of certain facts about leprosy.

History of Leprosy

2. There is a rich body of literature on the history of leprosy, with ancient texts mentioning symptoms suggestive of the disease from as far back as 4000 BC. The condition is known to have existed in ancient India, China, Israel, and Egypt (3^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Skeleton Pushes Back Leprosy's Origins
   
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3. Mycobacterium leprae was in fact the first identified disease causing bacteria in humans and the discovery is credited to G. H. Armauer Hansen in the year 1873 (4^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   The discovery of Mycobacterium leprae. A medical achievement in the light of evolving scientific methods
   
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4. Promin, which was the first effective treatment for leprosy, only became available over half a century later in the 1940s (5^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   About Leprosy
   
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5. Indian scientist Shantaram Yawalkar was also instrumental in the fight against leprosy. He formulated a combination therapy that used both rifampicin and dapsone, in an effort to control bacterial resistance (6^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Towards Elimination of Stigma & Untouchability: A Case for Leprosy.
   
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6. Multidrug therapy (MTD) was only introduced in the 1980s and the disease was finally brought under control (7^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Uniform multidrug therapy for leprosy patients in Brazil (U-MDT/CT-BR): Results of an open label, randomized and controlled clinical trial, among multibacillary patients
   
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Statistics on Leprosy

7. Over 200,000 new cases reported every year in more than 120 countries (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Leprosy
   
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8. It is estimated that some 16 million patients have been cured of the disease through the use of MDT over the past 2 decades (8^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Facilitating the provision of medicines for leprosy
   
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9. 95% of all new cases were reported from within 23 countries while the rest of the world just accounted for 5% (9^✔ ✔Trusted Source
   Urgently address gaps in leprosy services and accelerate efforts towards zero leprosy infection and disease: WHO
   
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10. More than 55% of all new cases of leprosy were reported from India (10^✔ ✔Trusted Source
    Epidemiological scenario of leprosy in marginalized communities of India: Focus on scheduled tribes
    
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11. In regions where the disease is endemic, as is the case in India, as much as 95% of the population is naturally immune to the infection, making the disease far less threatening in terms of contagion.
12. In 1985, the disease was regarded as a public health problem in 122 countries. It has been eliminated from 119 of these countries (11^✔ ✔Trusted Source
    Leprosy epidemiology and demographics
    
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Types of Leprosy

13. There are actually two types of leprosy. Tuberculoid and lepromatous leprosy are the two forms and both cause the appearance of skin sores, but lepromatous is a lot more severe, causing the appearance of large bumps and lumps (12^✔ ✔Trusted Source
    About Leprosy
    
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Causes of Leprosy

14. Drug resistant varieties of Mycobacterium leprae have become a cause for concern as this has contributed to an increase in leprosy cases (13^✔ ✔Trusted Source
    Leprosy Drug Resistance Surveillance in Colombia: The Experience of a Sentinel Country
    
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Risk Factors of Leprosy

15. Leprosy is not that infectious when the patient receives treatment and there is almost no risk of infection within just 2 weeks of treatment.