Leprosy Mailing List – December 2nd, 2006
Ref.: Leprosy in
medical schools
From: Warren G., Sydney, Australia
Dear Salvatore
I was very interested reading Dr Rao’s letter (LML Sep. 12th,
2006). He hits on a real
problem. In the 1950s a survey was taken in India of the
number of medical schools that did teach leprosy and found that
even in India where leprosy was acknowledged to be highly endemic it
was very low under 20% I believe. I wonder now in 2006 in india
how many Medical schools teach a reasonable an mount of leprosy?
Other countries too. In my world wide travels I
find that most medical students are taught very little many nothing;
even in endemic countries. In
Hong Kong
in the 1960s I had a battle to continue the one day of
clinical leprosy in the medical syllabus. I do not know what they do
now? 40 years later.
In my own training I remember we learnt the problems of
culture of M. leprae. But we certainly learnt
virtually nothing about the disease! Yes
it is best to learn from the patients but with the rapid
transport of people round the world one needs to look for leprosy
in every country of the world. Here
in
Australia
I am asked to see patients, often migrants with obvious leprosy
lesions who have been treated in
Australia
, for many other things because the doctors were never taught to think
of leprosy as a diagnosis and Australians travel over seas and
migrants arrive with the diseases.
Is there some way of increasing the teaching on leprosy
worldwide to students and doctors? I
still support something like Yawalkar as a basic book, because of its
good colour pictures. The
old B & W favourites, like Cochrane are heavy reading and not
popular with modern students, and the cost of writing and
publishing something new!
Greetings,
Grace Warren
