PESHAWAR, Aug 12: Lack of treatment facilities in the Frontier province has been causing problems for patients suffering from leprosy.

“There are 8,000 registered leprosy patients in the province,” said a doctor.

“Leprosy is an infectious disease in which nerves become insensitive and get enlarged, and reddish lesions appear on the body. Its causative agents are unhygienic environment and food,” said the doctor.

Samples for a test called skin smear and skin biopsy are taken from the earlobe of patients and are sent either to the UK or the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi.

In 1999, the government had announced that leprosy was under control. According to the WHO’s criteria, a country is regarded leprosy free if the control rate happens to be 1/100,000. But the control rate is still high in some areas of the NWFP, such as Hazara and Malakand - evident from the 45 new cases reported last year in the Mansehra district only.

Likewise, the WHO’s declaration that leprosy would be eradicated worldwide and its vaccines be manufactured by the year 2000, is yet to be materialized.

Now the main focus is on the early diagnosis in order to treat patients at initial stages before they suffer from deformities.

Two third of the total leprosy patients in the world are in India, whereas in Pakistan the disease is more prevalent in Karachi and in some parts of the NWFP. There are total 38 centres, most of them in Malakand and Hazara region, in the province with one 20-bed ward in the Lady Reading Hospital.

The disease can recur even after a period of 25 years. Being a poor-specific ailment, patients depended on charities for treatment. Last year, a team of plastic surgeons from Germany operated on 25 patients for deformities.

Health Minister Inayatullah Khan told Dawn that no new case of leprosy was reported during the current year.