In the 1959 Hollywood epic Ben Hur, the final act found the titular character seeking out his family and breaking down after realizing that his mother and sister had been banished away from society and isolated after contracting leprosy. It is a heart-breaking moment that accurately depicts the mindset towards the dreaded disease over 2000 years ago. The problem is, even today, that mindset has not changed even though we have achieved so much in our fight against leprosy.
With close to 200,000 cases of leprosy reported every year, the present estimate for people living with Hansen's disease stands between 2 to 3 million in the world. And sadly, India accounted for 60% of the total number of new cases as per the Global Leprosy Update 2017. Even though we have reduced the burden of the disease drastically over the last century, elimination is still a far distance away from eradication.…
