VELLORE: Schieffelin Institute of Health Research Leprosy Centre, popularly known as Karigiri Hospital, 15 kilometres from Vellore near Katpadi, on its sixtieth year of treating leprosy patients has volunteered to help set up leprosy training resource centres in all States in the country. This was disclosed by its director, Dr Mannam Ebenezer, on the occasion of the diamond jubilee celebrations of the leprosy centre on Saturday, held in the Karigiri Hospital campus.
“Karigiri Hospital will continue to look to improve effective treatment methods of leprosy and its complications. It will carry out research in the unresolved questions about the disease,” he added.
“As we look back over the last 60 years, we recall how the Karigiri Hospital had offered hope and avenues of cure to millions of people affected by leprosy in the country at a time when there was no hope for a cure,” Ebenezer recalled.
He went on to thank the initiative taken by founders, Dr Paul Brand, Dr Robert Cochrane and Dr Herbert Gass, professors in Christian Medical College who brought a new lease of life to curing leprosy-inflicted patients, correcting deformities, restoring dignity and improving the quality of life and social acceptance at a time when little was known about the disease.
The idea for a leprosy institute was conceived in 1950 and it took five years to bring this idea to fruition. These stalwarts pioneered the process of reconstructive surgery for leprosy patients, designed microcellular rubber footwear while devising best practice methods for the treatment of leprosy that have since become global benchmarks, Ebenezer added.
These initiatives have helped bring down the prevalence of leprosy in Vellore district from 250 cases out of a population of 10,000 (1 in 40) to 1 in 10,000 over a period of sixty years.
More than 60 per cent of the villages in the control area in the district which had incidences of leprosy are free of this disease now, he added.