Leprosy
Mailing List, December 30th, 2008
Ref.: Park's Textbook of
Preventive and Social Medicine-19th Edition, 2007
From: Ganapati R., Mumbay
,
India
Dear Dr Noto
We are
indebted to Dr V Pannikar for bringing to light the dangers of
propagating wrong concepts about leprosy to the medical students. It is not the first time that
this particular textbook has published such unscientific statements. When MDT was introduced by WHO
and practiced effectively as a mass strategy for eliminating leprosy,
Park was preaching archaic concepts of treatment and control. I pointed this out to the
author with no response till the later editions came out incorporating
the correct facts. By
that time several batches of students had read the book and appeared
for the examinations Even examiners are not updated on recent
developments in leprosy!
The
difficulty with textbooks is that such wrong messages reach a wide
range of students and teachers and it is not easy to revert the damage
quickly even if the author wants to do so. Probably an effective method
is to issue a strong statement directly to the teaching faculty of all
medical colleges throughout the regions where the text books are read.
Perhaps an authentic body
like WHO can do this.
I propose to
circulate a note with Dr Pannikar’s letter among the faculties of
dermatology and community medicine of the colleges situated in and
around
Bombay
where we have some contact.
Dr R Ganapati
Director
Emeritus
Bombay
Leprosy Project
