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An actress discovers a patch on the hand of a bride-to-be

Leprosy is one of the oldest and most feared diseases on earth, and until recently was both progressively disabling and incurable.

Since 1983, however, the disease has been simply and quickly curable with Multi-Drug Therapy, and since 1995 the drugs have been available free of charge to every patient in the world.

Ignorance & stigma

The biggest remaining barrier to eliminating the disease is ignorance and stigma: people do not know the drugs are available, and people are afraid to seek treatment.

In India, where 60 per cent of the world's leprosy patients live, leprosy has been seen as either hereditary or (as written in Hindi scriptures) a curse from God.

People who have the disease have not been able to marry, nor have members of their family. For this reason people have typically hidden the early symptoms as long as they possibly can, resulting in inevitable deformity and misery.

The solution – for people to seek treatment early when no permanent damage has been done – is dependent on eliminating this prejudice.

Our task in India, therefore, was to help to reverse centuries of stigma. We would do this by saturating the airwaves with spots, comedies, music and dramas based on leprosy themes. We would measure our success by the numbers of patients who reported for treatment, and by independent survey data indicating whether stigma had fallen.

The project

The 16-month project began in September 1999, and focused on the 5 states in India where leprosy is endemic: Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal, with a combined total population of 467m people. Funding was provided by UK government's Department for International Development.

In accordance with the Trust's philosophy of working in partnership with national broadcasters in developing countries, all programming was created by Doordarshan TV and All-India Radio.

The sheer scale of the campaign was unprecedented: some 50 TV programmes and 213 radio programmes, produced in 20 languages.

These were broadcast nearly 800 times on TV and 5500 times on radio, by far the largest leprosy campaign in history.

For remote areas, we also conducted 1727 live drama shows, 2746 video-van screenings and 3670 public events or competitions.

Diagnosis

Firstly, some 186,000 patients were diagnosed and treated by the Ministry of Health immediately following the campaign. Secondly – and arguably more importantly in the long term - there has been a dramatic impact on attitudes.

The reach and effectiveness of the campaign has been measured independently by the ORG Centre for Social Research.

The results

The results of their final evaluation are summarised below:

The radio and TV spots were seen by 59 per cent of the total population (467m people) of the 5 states, i.e. 275m people.

The impact on stigma was dramatic: the percentage of the total population believing leprosy is hereditary fell from 56 per cent to 19 per cent after Phase Two. This means some 172m people changed their attitudes on this issue over the 12 month period (see graph).

The percentage of people believing leprosy is transmitted by touch fell from 52 per cent to 27 per cent (i.e. 117m people changed their minds).

The percentage who claimed they would not sit next to a leprosy patient fell from 44 per cent to 27 per cent (i.e. 93m people changed their minds).

The percentage who claimed they would eat food prepared by a leprosy patient rose from 32 per cent to 50 per cent (i.e. 84m people changed their minds).

The percentage who believe that leprosy is caused by bad deeds in a previous life fell from 37 per cent to 12 per cent (i.e. 70m people changed their minds).

The Times applauds our leprosy campaign

"The power of radio and television has moved into the realms of healing. A little-trumpeted charity arm of the BBC has helped to cure nearly 200,000 leprosy sufferers in India in the past year, after spearheading the world's biggest drive against the disease.

Equally importantly, it is helping to remove the stigma surrounding leprosy among millions of people living in the sub-continent". The Times - Friday, 27 October 2000.