Leprosy

Leprosy

I was shocked reading your article (Thursday, The Jakarta Post, April 27, 1995) about leprosy drugs and the immunity leprosy bacilli have developed to these drugs. I do not know Prof. Adhi Djuanda, but I do hope that the article does not reflect his opinion about this issue. It is certainly true that leprosy bacilli are getting more resistant to DDS and there are a few reports of resistance to one of the other drugs as well, but so far no resistance has been reported to all three drugs currently used together.

The threat of developing immunity was the reason WHO in the early 1980s advised to treat leprosy with three drugs instead of DDS alone, and this treatment is used in Indonesia, at least in the government program. At present, taking the prescribed dosages of these drugs over the advised period of time assures the patient that he or she will become fully free of the disease. The risk of the disease recurring years after a full course of the drugs is small, as was pointed out again recently in an editorial in Leprosy Review. The present combination of these three drugs is far more powerful than the previous therapy of DDS alone.

Besides the present three drugs, there are other drugs currently being tested, and these tests show promising results. All this does not guarantee that in the future the gloomy picture described in the article will not become true, but at present it certainly is not! The best way to prevent such a thing from happening is to make sure that all leprosy patients get their full treatment on a regular basis, and this depends to a great extent on how the community looks at leprosy patients, therefore I fully support that part of the article.

DR. F.J. MOET

The Leprosy Mission

International

Jakarta