Leprosy is very dangerous for your personal health. It can make you skin fall off. Leprosy slowly eats away at you body. It is deadly to all genders, all ages, all sizes and all races.Another name for leprosy is Hansen's Disease. Leprosy is caused by the organism mycobacterium leprae. The pathogen that carries it is bacteria. Throughout the years people have suspected that inhaling and touching the bacteria could spread leprosy.Symptoms of leprosy appear three to five years after contact. Symptoms include; redness or white patches of skin, lumps on several parts of the body, and fingers and toes may curl inward. The bacteria of leprosy can sometimes cause blindness. If leprosy is not treated nerves can be severely damaged causing no control over some parts of the body. Leprosy has two common forms; tuberculoid, and lepromatous. Both forms produce lesions on the skin, but the lepromatous form is very severe, producing large disfiguring nodules. Tuberculoid os known to cause tuberculosis and lepromatous is known to cause leprosy.The main challenges for Hansen's Disease is elimination efforts are to reach populations that have not yet received multi-drug therapy services, improve detection of the disease, and provide patients with good quality health care, and free medications.Hansen's Disease in the Western Pacific is a particular problem. In 1999, there were 640,000 cases in the World, and 108 cases in the United States of America. In the year 2000, there were 738,284 cases in the World and 131 cases in the United States of America. This shows an increase of 98,284 cases in the World in one year's time and an increase of 23 cases in the United States of America in one year's time.Leprosy is nationally notifiable in the United States. In the past and in the present people who have leprosy have became outcasts. Leprosy originated in tropical climates. A large number of crusaders were diagnosed with leprosy because they traveled throughout the world having contact with people who had leprosy. Crusaders who came down with leprosy would leave their homes and wander around the world with cloth or rags wrapped around their bodies. The monks were the only people who cared for the lepers. Since there was no cure for leprosy in the past, they decide to build leper colonies, so leprosy wouldn't spread throughout the towns. There are cures today, so we don't need any leprosy colonies. The medication takes about six months to cure lepromatous form, and about two years to cure the tuberculoid form.Today leprosy is very rare in the United States, but in India there are about 500,000 new cases every year. This is why it is very important that education about this disease, and the medication for this disease is available for people around the world.
