Although
the Philippines has drastically reduced the incidence of leprosy over the
years, it continues to account for the bulk of cases in the Western Pacific
Region brought about by misconceptions and stigma worsened by religion,
according to the Department of Health (DOH).
Health Secretary Enrique Ona on Monday said
the stigma of leprosy was still “very obvious” in the Philippines—a mainly
religious country—particularly from the pulpit.
"There is always a time where leprosy is
talked about in sermons…in the church. We have to do something about that,”
said Ona at a press conference with top officials of the World Health
Organisation-Western Pacific Region.
WHO experts and national leprosy control
program managers from the region yesterday gathered for a three-day meeting to
introduce a new global leprosy control strategy, review the latest
epidemiological data and help boost member countries’ capacity to control the
disease.
Ona said leprosy should no longer have the
stigma it did during "biblical times", when those afflicted with the
disease were branded as "lepers" and described as disfigured and
unclean.
Curable
disease
"During biblical times when they said
leprosy, very severe deformities that were present in some old, old cases
easily come to our mind but what we should understand is that leprosy is a
curable disease," Ona told reporters.
According to the WHO, the Philippines accounts
for 40 per cent of the total cases monitored each year in the region, which
consists of 37 countries with a total population of about 1.8 billion.
Despite having met the elimination target of
less than one case per 10,000 population, the region continues to register
5,000 new leprosy cases each year, of which 2,000 are in the Philippines.
Fail
to meet target
Three Western Pacific countries—the Federated
States of Micronesia, Kiribati and the Mashall Islands—have yet to meet the
target, said Dr. Shin Young-soo, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.
"We opened the champagne too early, we
think that the disease is gone but it is not totally gone,” Shin said at the
briefing.
Ona said new cases of leprosy continued to
sprout in the country because society—including policymakers, health workers
and the media—had underestimated its threat given the minimal number of cases
being reported.
Dr. Alberto Romualdez, a basic biomedical
scientist and president of the Culion Foundation, stressed that while there was
sufficient free medicine to treat patients, information about the disease has
been deficient and methods of looking for cases had become obsolete.
"The methods we use now have been stuck
with the methods used in the past,” said Romualdez.
500
cases
In Metro Manila alone, over 500 new cases have
been monitored in various health centers and hospitals.
Health officials on Monday said that to curb
the incidence of leprosy in the region, detection of the disease must be
prompt.
Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that causes
leprosy, multiplies very slowly and has an incubation period of three to 20
years.
No longer ostracised
But they stressed that although historically
many people with leprosy had been ostracised by their communities and families,
the situation had changed.
"Leprosy is now completely curable and is
not practically contagious,” said Ona.
In the religious sense, the disease that is
often depicted in the Bible does not refer merely to a medical condition, but a
“physical manifestation of a moral or spiritual malaise,” explained Msgr. Pedro
Quitorio, the Catholic bishops’ media director.
Jocelyn R. Uy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
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