Immigration and human rights in leprosy

摘要

The World Health Organisation in the early 1990s set its goal as 'the elimination of leprosy as a publichealth problem by the year 2000'.1With multiple drug therapy freely available, over 15 million peoplehave been cured since the 1980s and the elimination goal of less than one case per 10 000 population wasreached at a global level by 2000 and all but a small number of countries had achieved the target by2005. From 2006 to 2010 the WHO Global Leprosy Strategy2rightly focused its attention much moretowards reducing the burden of leprosy and ensuring the quality and sustainability of control activities.This enabled much more focus to be given to the issues of equity, social justice and human rights andindeed these continue to be prominent in the recent WHO Global Leprosy Strategy for 2011– 2015adopted by 44 National Leprosy Programme managers in New Delhi, India in April 2009.3Thepromotion of human rights and social justice in dealing with people affected by leprosy remains vital inaddressing the persistent problems of stigma and discrimination suffered by people affected and theirfamilies