KARACHI, Feb 1: Various programmes are being organized in connection with the 49th World Leprosy Week beginning from Saturday.

The day is observed to express solidarity with the people suffering from the crippling disease.

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, the chief of the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (MALC) which is implementing the national leprosy control programme said that the main function of the week would be held at Atari Towers on Saturday morning.

He said that two other functions — the Patients’ Day and the Visitors’ Day — would be held at the MALC in Saddar on Feb 4 and Feb 6.

He said that at present there were less than 1 patient per 10,000 population (0.14 per cent) which, according to the World Health Organization target, meant that the disease had been controlled. That WHO had given the target that the disease should be under control by the year 2000, it was achieved in 1996.

He said that nearly 50,000 patients had been registered at the MALC from all over the country since its establishment in 1956. However, there were still around 20,000 patients who were being treated. He said that more than half the patient load came from Karachi.

Tracing a brief history of the MALC, he said that a small group of nuns, the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, belonging to the Marie Adelaide of France, started the MALC here nearly 45 years back with a small dispensary made of wooden crates, to serve a colony of leprosy patients at McLeod Road.

He said a Mexican pharmacist, Sr Berenice Vargas, one of the pioneers who started the dispensary, and a German lady, Dr Ruth Pfau, who joined the MALC in 1960, were still with the MALC.

He said that the German funding started soon after Dr Pfau’s work was printed in German newspapers over four decades back.

He said that the treatment was totally free at the MALC which received around 60 per cent of its annual budget — totalling nearly Rs110 million — from the German Leprosy Relief Association. The GLRA had so far provided over Rs600 million in the last 40 years. The government provided some assistance from the Zakat fund and Baitul Maal, another big local donor was the Infaq Foundation and the rest was generated through fund-raising.

He said that over the years the MALC had expanded and now had a 7-storey complex comprising an 80-bed hospital, a national training institute, a laboratory etc in the city. It had over 170 centres all over the country.

He said that the incubation period of the disease was between a few weeks and almost 40 years, so there might be some patients infected with the bacteria and in the incubation period, so monitoring had to be continued for the next many decades to ensure that the disease had been wiped out from the country.

He said that besides treatment, the MALC under its social rehabilitation programme also provided financial assistance to patients for housing and small businesses to rehabilitate them.

He said that the MALC, having controlled leprosy in the country had, in collaboration with the government, started its work on prevention of blindness in Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP, and on TB control in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the Northern Areas.