When Raoul Follereau designated the last Sunday in January as World Leprosy Day, his two main messages were that leprosy is curable and that persons affected by leprosy are entitled to rights like all other persons. In advance of this year’s World Leprosy Day, the ILEP President stresses the millions of persons ILEP Members have helped cure over the last 45 years and the key role ILEP Members and their partners can play in upholding their rights.

A child gets diagnosed with Leprosy every 20 minutes and this can be the start of a tragic future paved with hardship and rejection for them and their family. The stigma of Leprosy reaches far beyond the treatment of the disease.

The 25th March 2011 issue of the World Health Organization’s Weekly Epidemiological Record is on the topic of Neglected Tropical Diseases, of which leprosy is one of 17.

 At a ceremony on 11 October 2010 at the headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Novartis committed to supplying multidrug therapy (MDT) free of charge to all persons affected by leprosy for another five years.

For many Australians, it is easy to take for granted our privileges, not least in our access to and choice of top quality education. Anne Roberts, a graduate of the University of Sydney's Faculty of Health Sciences, is extremely aware of this, after almost ten years of working abroad with those less fortunate.