Pobe (Benin) (AFP) – Farmer Folahan is one of up to 200 people in the west African country of Benin who still contract leprosy every year.<\/p>\n
Her face is covered in nodules — a symptom of the condition — when she arrives at the screening centre in the town of Pobe, in the east of the country.<\/p>\n
Doctors put her on medication straight away. If she takes it properly for 12 months and there are no side effects, she will be completely cured.<\/p>\n
Leprosy is officially a disease of the past, relegated to the annals of history with conditions such as smallpox and bubonic plague.<\/p>\n
But more than 210,000 people across the globe still contract it annually.<\/p>\n
The disease, which affects the skin and nerves, causing grave damage to the hands, feet and eyes, is spread by close contact between people, particularly those living in poverty.<\/p>\n
Folahan’s four-year-old son will need to be monitored closely.<\/p>\n
In 2000, the World Health Organization said that leprosy, a disease long associated with biblical times, was no longer a public health problem with a rate of less than one case per 10,000 people.<\/p>\n
“It’s true that leprosy affects fewer people than malaria,” said Beninese doctor Roch Christian Johnson, who is the current president of the International Leprosy Association (ILA), on a return visit to his home country.<\/p>\n
“But here 25 percent of the cases detected already have serious and debilitating handicaps.”<\/p>\n
In the tiny nation of Benin, between 150 and 200 new cases of leprosy are recorded every year, of which 10 percent are children. That number hasn’t changed much in a decade.<\/p>\n
– Rural area –<\/p>\n
The screening centre in the heart of Pobe was built by the Fondation Raoul Follereau on the site of a former leper colony and has taken in about 20 patients every year since 2000.<\/p>\n
Pobe is situated near the border with Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, which every year records some 4,000 cases of leprosy.<\/p>\n
“Patients always arrive too late, when their wounds are gangrenous,” said Thierry Gateau, who runs the Pobe centre.<\/p>\n
People with leprosy are often farmers like Pascal Boton, who don’t get a diagnosis early enough and damage their numb limbs.<\/p>\n
Boton had an accident and didn’t feel anything but, as it does with most cases, the wound got infected and his foot had to be amputated.<\/p>\n
“Nurses came to give me medication and then they stopped,” he told AFP.<\/p>\n
Without regular treatment, the symptoms of leprosy don’t go away.<\/p>\n
– ‘A curse’ –<\/p>\n
“It’s a sensitive issue,” said Annick Chauty, a French doctor, who has spent 15 years in Pobe.<\/p>\n
“Here leprosy is associated with a curse so we pretend we’ve come to study skin diseases.”<\/p>\n
In Benin, “it’s thought to be an illness caused by bad luck”, added Ambroise Adeye, a surgeon for the foundation and the town’s public hospital.<\/p>\n
“People with leprosy first go to see traditional healers and that makes things worse. They then have to save up to pay for a consultation.”<\/p>\n
But treatment for leprosy, which involves a course of three antibiotics, is free and prescribed in free clinics across Benin.<\/p>\n
To spread the word, the National Programme Against Leprosy, run by the country’s health ministry, broadcasts messages on community radio stations and conducts awareness programmes.<\/p>\n
– Illness of poverty –<\/p>\n
People with leprosy, many of them left disabled by the disease, have seen their houses knocked down and fields trampled. Wives have been thrown out of their homes.<\/p>\n
Oladele, a 24-year-old barber, for example has been leprosy free for three years. The only traces of the disease are his slightly clawed fingers.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to go back to the fields. The centre offered me training. I chose hairdressing,” he said.<\/p>\n
Sessions with a physiotherapist mean he can hold the cutters and scissors without any problems.<\/p>\n
His boss is supportive and his family paid for his apprenticeship. When money isn’t available, the Follereau foundation steps in and pays for rehabilitation.<\/p>\n
“There’s better acceptance but people who’ve had leprosy need help,” said Gateau.<\/p>\n
It’s possible to make leprosy a thing of the past, he said, but on one condition: “A country needs to develop. Leprosy is still an illness of poverty.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pobe (Benin) (AFP) – Farmer Folahan is one of up to 200 people in the west African country of Benin who still contract leprosy every year. Her face is covered in nodules — a symptom of the condition — when she arrives at the screening centre in the town of Pobe, in the east of Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}