May 11 is Fr. Damien's Day

TWELVE MILLION LIKE ME
By Marian Curd
TWELVE million people suffering from one of the world's oldest and most defiant diseases, leprosy, are being given new hope as production of new easy-to-take drugs is stepped up and research into this killer illness is intensified.
—New hope because research chemists and laboratories in many parts of the world are spending thousands of pounds testing compounds and their action on leprosy bacteria.
—New hope because of the increasing knowledge and use of sulphone and other new drugs.
—New hope because such as Dr. R. G. Cochrane, Consultant Leprologist and Adviser to the Ministry of Health. is waging a campaign for a training hospital to be opened in this country for doctors willing to specialise in this work, and to found in addition a medical research centre.
CHANGE OF ATTITUDE
—And there's new hope in the psychological field for, in the words of a World Health Office spokesman "In the past decade I have seen leprosy gradually change from a legendary mystic evil whose very name spelled fear, to a disease which is being effectively treated like any other that medicine thoroughly understands".
Who are the people who are today waging more fiercely than ever a battle started thousands of years ago when everything was done to the leper but precious little was done for him.
In days past to be stricken with leprosy was to be condemned to a Iising death. It was to watch one's own bodily decomposition advance until real death came to relieve the suffering of a lifetime.
Today the leprosy sufferer can hose every hope of a cure and of returning to his or her own family —and can in some cases be treated and cured without even leaving the family home.
'This is the case with many of missions in India helped annually by the world-wide Order of Charity whose British branch now numbers over 500 active members (many of them in Malta) and whose army of several thousand associate members is rapidly growing.
"Our aim," secretary Mr. John Southworth told me this week, is twofold. It is It 7 Collect money to help leper hospitals of any denomination. mainly in India, and to help in getting people to overcome prejudice and understand that leprosy is an illness just like any other illness and is generally not contagious."
ORDER OF CHARITY
The Indian government's plan
today. he told me, is to survey the I country area by area taking an area of a hundred or so square miles at Et time. All leprosy sufferers are registered. The next step is to provide mobile medical teams based on a smaller hospital than the oldstyle leper "colonies" to tour the villages at regular intervals giving treatment and leaving supplies of drugs to tide over until the next visit.
In the year which ended February 1963, the Order of Charity in association with the British Leprosy Relief Association (BELRA), sent some £2,865 overseas to 23 hospitals or missions; £1,315 went to Catholic missions, the balance to other leper centres.
The Order was founded some 20 years ago by globe-trotting worker for charity, Raoul Follereau, who has collected more than £500,000 for their work.
Details of membership can be obtained from the Secretary at 9 Grosvenor Crescent, London, W.I.
ST. FRANCIS LEPER GUILD
Standing right behind our missionary Orders and Congregations working in faraway lands to help leprosy sufferers is, of course, St. Francis Leper Guild — the name which springs to mind whenever mention is made of Fr. Damien's day (May 11).
For more than 15 Orders and Congregations and many diocesan priests who are right in the forefront in providing the most up-todate treatment St. Francis Leper Guild in the year ended March 1963, collected almost £19.000 by means of subscriptions, donations, the pennies of schoolchildren. and the covenants of their elders.
Founded in 1895, the guild collected £60 in its first two years. To date more than e223.000 has been sent to assist leprosy sufferers regardless of nationality or creed.
Run from the London (20 The Boltons, S.W.I0) house of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, the first world-wide missionary order of women, the Guild is yet another aspect of the work in the fields of education, social and medical, undertaken by this 10.000-Sister Congregation which, Mother St. Peter told me this week, is flourishing in 69 countries from Iceland to the Philippines.
Today. these sisters care for over 8.000 in-patients in 19 leper hospitals; over 131.700 out-patients are treated at 25 leprosy centres. And this. of course, is only one aspect of their work. High on the receiving end of the Guild of St. Francis' yearly handouts are, of course, the missionary orders and congregations so wellknown for their work in all fields. Among those hard at work on the treatment and eradication of leprosy we note the Benedictines, Franciscans, Mill Hill Fathers, the Redemptorists, the Camillans, the Holy Ghost Fathers, the • Verona Fathers, the White Fathers, the Medical Missionaries of Mary, and the Franciscan Missions of the Divine Motherhood,
It is money like this that will pay for wonder-cure sulphone drugs. Drugs like Sulphetrone, product of Burroughs Wellcome. Three grammes daily in take-away tablet form will. in the case of a patient who presents himself in time, cure in a period varying from a few months to several years. His treatment costs about 6d. a day, and when you consider that an average
adult patient will need a kilo or about 21b of the drug per year, the necessity of manufacturing the stun by the ton is all the more pressing. A year's course of Sulphetrone costs £6 6s.
But it was from Burroughs and Wellcome that I was shocked to hear in this day of the hand outstretched in charity that there are several nations (notably in Africa) who by their import duties can clamp as much as 25 par cent on the price of a cure. . . It makes you think.
The matter has been taken up and is currently under discussion in several quarters. We trust there will be a swift and happy solution.
NYASALAND INITIATIVE
An excellent example of a country's determination to stamp out this disease is Nyasaland where 30,000 lepers stand a good chance of being cured because another modern drug, Dapsone, used experimentally for two years, has been perfected and the entire African Federal medical staff have been trained to diagnose and treat the disease.
The Director of Medical Services in Nyasaland. Dr. Peter Stevens, says the Federal Ministry of Health it poised to clear up leprosy in Nyasaland. There are ample supplies of Dapsone at all Government Health Centres and at one leprosarium alone 1,000 patients have been discharged as cured in the past five years.
CARE, ALL THE WAY
The outstanding care taken by research chemists in developing and marketing a new drug was accentuated when I spoke to LC.I., whose latest product, Etisul, for the relief and cure of leprosy sufferers is gradually overtaking the sulphone products.
Etisul is easy to administer—it is rubbed on the skin—was first discovered in 1958, "It was developed in our own laboratories at Alderley Park, Cheshire." I.C.les spokesman told me. And it was discovered, as are so many great drugs. almost by accident. Compounds of some 400 different chemicals were being examined in a search for—not a leprosy cure—but an anti-tuberculosis drug.
The compound actually existed in 1953. Experiments and tests showed that it had useful leprotic effects, the bacteria of which is related to that of TB.
But so exhaustive is the testing, first in laboratories, then on animals (mostly rats and mice), that it was several years before even a limited amount of the drug could be sent out for closely-controlled clinical trials.
With such as the thalidomide tragedies still in mind, it is reassuring to know of the care taken by this firm. As much as £30,000 can be spent in a short period on one aspect of research, and. in the case of Etisul, as of other drugs. specially tested are the reactions of foetus in pregnant animals. Every drug produced by I.C.I. is tested in this way.
There is a psychological angle to Etisul also. it is scented. it is rubbed on the skin thereby relieving the patient's desire for something to soothe his sores, and the patient can very soon return to his family without fear of contagion, And the cost? Approximately Is. per dose (again this can vary if a country imposes those import duties). Distribution is mainly through hospitals, through Crown Agents, and Government Health Services.
Ten years ago Raoul Follereau was pleading to world leaders for "the price of two bombers" to halt the ravages of leprosy. At least 12 million people are still suffering from it; some five million of them in the Commonwealth. And only 10 per cent are receiving treatment. A year's course of a sulphone drug for one patient costs about six guineas. A day's treatment costs 6d. to Is. Today it would need far more than the price of two jet-liners to stop this scourge. but still only a fraction of the world's arms budget.