History of leprosy in Malawi

 

During the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries leprosy spread through Africa downwards from the East.

In 1989 Malawi established its National Leprosy and Skin Diseases Control Programme, which has responsibility for controlling leprosy and other skin diseases.

By 1994 Malawi was recording less than one case of leprosy per 10 000 inhabitants. However at a Meeting of National Leprosy Programme Managers and their Partners organised by the African Regional Office of the World Health Organization in Brazzaville in June 2010, it was revealed that a slight increase in numbers of leprosy cases in some areas is a reason to monitor the situation closely.

 

The National Leprosy and Skin Diseases Control Programme aims to detect persons who have leprosy and treat them as early as possible with multi-drug therapy, by providing health workers with the necessary training and by involving the community in detecting and referring persons who are suspected of having leprosy. It also aims to prevent the development of impairments and to help those who already have impairments.  

 

One of the longest and largest epidemiological research studies ever into leprosy, including clinical trials, was conducted in Malawi. ILEP Member, LEPRA Health in Action, which was supporting anti-leprosy work in Karonga when the Karonga Prevention Study began in the late nineteen-seventies, gave its support from the beginning. The Karonga Prevention Study was stimulated by the discovery that armadillos could be used to culture mycobacteria leprae. Researchers from WHO’s Tropical Disease Research unit and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) conducted the most intensive case finding and leprosy control programme ever carried out in leprosy according to Professor Paul Fine of the LSHTM. Biopsies were carried out on everyone who was suspected of having leprosy and all cases were treated. Karonga was selected, because it is isolated and there are few roads into and out of this region. This presented the researchers with considerable physical, logistical and administrative challenges at a time before computers, decent roads and global positioning systems. One of the main findings of the research when it extended into tuberculosis was that a booster BCG vaccine could offer as much as fifty per cent additional protection against contracting leprosy. (See listing of research papers under the articles section for further details of findings and conclusions).


Archive Listing for Malawi of the Global Project on the History of Leprosy:

http://www.leprosyhistory.org/cgi-bin/showdetails.pl?ID=258&type=Archive

 

Presentation made at the WHO African Regional Office Meeting of National Leprosy Programme Managers and Partners in Africa, 22nd – 24th June 2010

In Literature

In Literature

The Lepers of Moyo

Paul Theroux

1994