Leprosy existed in the Philippines long before the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century and was known locally by such terms as 'ketong' and 'cizaro'. 

In the early 1900s, there was a fairly high incidence of leprosy in the Philippines. The American colonial administration was keen to implement health and sanitation programmes, influenced by popular fields of public health and tropical medicine .  Given the absence of any known cure and inspired by numerous positive reports about the colony in Molokai in Hawaii, an active campaign for the segregation of “lepers” was initiated. One such ‘leper colony’ was located on Culion Island and opened in 1906. In order to provide a legal framework for the active collection and incarceration of people suspected of leprosy throughout the archipelago, a segregation law, that practically criminalized the harbouring and non-voluntary submission of “lepers”, was enacted in 1907. At its peak, Culion was home to over 5,000 people.

When the Philippines National Leprosy Control Program (NLCP) was established in 1986, there were 38,570 registered leprosy patients in the country. According to WHO statistics, there were 2, 514 new cases detected in 2007.