The International Leprosy Union (ILU) Thursday launched a renewed effort to eradicate leprosy from India by the yearend, with the country reporting the highest incidence of the disease at 215,000 cases.

In its mission, "the last mile in the battle against leprosy", ILU in association with WHO is launching awareness campaigns and rehabilitation programmes to accomplish the goal.

"From Thursday onwards, ILU along with Multi Drug Therapy (MDT) intervention, awareness strategies, involvement of cured leprosy persons named as Lokdoots and rehabilitation programmes will collectively make the eradication of the disease an achievable target," said S.D. Gokhale, chairman ILU India.

"Though India has achieved considerable progress in the elimination process, its prevalence rate is 2.4 per 10,000 people that is much worse than the international standard, having a prevalence rate of less than one."

The WHO goal of elimination of leprosy as a public health problem is defined as low prevalence below one case per 10,000 population.

"Since, leprosy remains more a disease of the mind with immense stigma attached to it, we are focussing on more people to people contact and collaboration with grassroots level NGOs in the battle against this disease," said Gokhale. 

ILU has started a new programme that will take cured leprosy patients to those suffering from the disease for direct interaction and organise 'care and concern' camps to convince people to take up the mission in a more open way.

"Lokdoots are our brand ambassadors in this mission. Besides we are inviting WHO goodwill ambassador and Nippon Foundation president Yohei Sasakawa of Japan to India to give momentum to this campaign," Gokhale told IANS.

ILU will arrange also for reconstruction surgery and provide vocational training free of cost to patients for physical sustenance and self-employment.
 
To make the mission more acceptable, ILU is also felicitating 36 cured and rehabilitated leprosy patients from nine states of India with the International Leprosy Union Award.

The states where leprosy prevalence is high are Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

By the end of 2003, 113 countries achieved the leprosy elimination goal. By the end of 2004, the number of nations left to achieve the goal narrowed down to six.