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Journalism of Courage
After a long time, there’s some good news on the leprosy front. The National Institute of Immunology’s new anti-leprosy vaccine, could not have come at a more opportune moment. Statistics have revealed that leprosy, which is really a pre-modern disease and should have, like small-pox, been completely eradicated by now, continues to cause concern in countries like India. A state like Orissa had a high prevalence rate of 15.9 per 10,000 in 1991. Ironically, urbanisation and the consequent access to public health care, should logically have brought down the incidence of leprosy in the country, but there is enough evidence to belie such a claim. In 1981, Delhi recorded 1.6 per 10,000 cases. Twenty years later, the figure had increased to 8.8 per 10,000. And this, despite the fact, that all the country’s large cities are supposedly covered under the MDTS or multi-drug therapy scheme.
It is in this context that the NII’s breakthrough in developing an immunotherapeutic vaccine to tackle the disease needs to beseen. The drug, which is to be marketed by an Ahmedabad-based pharmaceutical firm under the name `Leprovac’, is believed to have three distinct advantages. First, it cuts down the time taken for treatment drastically since it expedites the clearance of dermal granuloma associated with leprosy. In fact, a leprosy patient given prompt treatment can expect to be cured within a span of six to 12 months, as against the three to five years that conventional treatment takes. Second, it is not known to have any side-effects and can be administered along with the conventional multi-drug therapy. Third, it is inexpensive, with each dose costing about six rupees. So the whole course of eight vaccines can be administered at a cost of less than Rs 50.
All the three factors are crucial in a health environment like India’s where funds for public health facilities are minimal, where health consciousness is low and where diseases strike, not individuals, but whole communities. Take a disease like malaria. Despite theNational Malaria Control Programme being launched in 1953, anything from 2 to 3 million cases at a conservative estimate occur annually in this country. Pulmonary tuberculosis is another top killer, with an estimated four million people in this country suffering from it. Therefore fast, efficacious and easy-to-administer cures are just what the doctor ordered. But there are several hiccups that also need to be addressed. Often, patients arrive at district hospitals too late to be cured. This is where an active public health service network assumes vital importance. There are also the usual bureaucratic hurdles that come in the way of new drugs reaching patients quickly. A smooth lab-to-hospital transition for most medical breakthroughs is a rarity, partly because of lack of funds to conduct research trials. Even in the case of the leprosy vaccine, the whole process took close to 25 years. Research first began in the early 1970s at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences. But it wasn’t until a grantof Rs 2 crore was made available to the Department of Biotechnology that things really started happening. Think of it, if this vaccine was around earlier, thousands of leprosy patients could have been spared their trauma.
