It takes greater than the roll-out of medication to finish Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) like leprosy. It takes courage — courage to confront destructive myths and lies that shatter lives. It takes time and resources to succeed in a number of the most marginalised communities on earth. It takes relentless compassion to welcome back those that were once solid out.
But before any of that, it takes a willingness to look directly on the suffering the Western world is trying to not see.
Because at once, the neglect surrounding leprosy is condemning Generation Alpha — the very generation our own children belong to — to avoidable disability, isolation and unimaginable cruelty.
We are currently working with two children whose stories should shake every certainly one of us. Slightly boy in Nepal who was told he was cursed by a snake god, and a toddler in Nigeria whose ear was sliced off to atone for his mother allegedly being a witch.
What was their crime, you could ask? They had leprosy — a mildly infectious disease easily cured with a mix of antibiotics. A disease that becomes a lifelong sentence only when it’s left untreated since the world chooses to look away.
If these children lived within the UK, there could be a public outcry. Headlines across national papers. Questions in Parliament and protesters lining the streets demanding motion.
But because their suffering happens in distant communities across Asia and Africa — children whose names we don’t know and whose pain we don’t see — it someway becomes easy to disregard.
We within the West have fun how ‘small’ the world has grow to be. We fly long-haul for summer holidays. We work across continents as if borders and time zones barely exist. Distance, we are saying, isn’t any longer an obstacle. We may be residents of the world!
And yet in terms of truths that make us uncomfortable — like a Biblical, stigmatised disease destroying children’s lives — distance becomes a convenient excuse. An easy opportunity to look away. Well, a minimum of it’s not on my doorstep so I can avoid fascinated with it.
Governments do the identical. After Elon Musk boasted of feeding US Aid “to the woodchipper”, other wealthy nations, including the UK, followed suit by cutting their overseas aid. As a direct result, Generation Alpha has grow to be more vulnerable to leprosy than at any point in recent history. That should shame us.
Leprosy will not be malaria — a disease a lot of us can relate to because we have now taken tablets before flying somewhere quite lovely. Nor is it polio, which, despite immense challenges, received sustained global backing.
Leprosy once had that support. When the primary effective cure was discovered within the late twentieth century, the world surged forward with determination. But momentum faded too quickly. And for the past decade, latest cases have stagnated at around 200,000 annually, based on the World Health Organization. Yet research supports what we already know only too well. For every diagnosed case, 19 remain hidden.
Hidden children and hidden suffering. Hidden because governments don’t prioritise it and overstretched health systems simply can’t sustain.
With more conflicts now than at any time since World War II, and climate change hitting the poorest communities the toughest, we’re spiralling backwards. The UN’s goal of ending the epidemic of NTDs by 2030 will not be only painfully out of reach but not even in sight.
We know this not only from reports but from what our teams are finding daily. We are uncovering pockets where the number of youngsters with leprosy is shockingly high. And since the bacterium grows so slowly, visible symptoms in a young child mean the disease is circulating fiercely through their community.
The physical impact on young bodies is brutal — nerve damage, disability and searing pain. But the emotional impact is much more devastating. Children branded as cursed are driven out of college, cut off from friendships and grow up believing they’re unworthy of affection. Families are solid out from their communities, or their children are imprisoned inside 4 partitions for fear of the surface world discovering their ‘terrible’ secret.
If this were happening on our doorstep, we might consider it a monstrous injustice. Because it’s. We would never tolerate such cruelty for British children. So why can we tolerate it for youngsters in Nepal, Nigeria, India, Mozambique or Bangladesh?
Wherever a baby is suffering, all of us have a world responsibility. Our compassion should transcend postcodes, passports and borders. So it’s time to get up and finish what we began with the rollout of Multidrug therapy, the cure for leprosy, within the 80s and 90s. And this time not with the soul-crushing belief that if we don’t look, we won’t find and it should someway not exist. But with our whole hearts, knowing that we may be a part of a world force that spares Generation Alpha from leprosy — and each generation that follows.
Peter Waddup is Chief Executive of The Leprosy Mission.
