Leprosy campaign to storm the media

NEW DELHI, JAN 20: In a leprosy campaign, you need to demolish more than you need to create, what with age-old myths and stigma associated...

NEW DELHI, JAN 20: In a leprosy campaign, you need to demolish more than you need to create, what with age-old myths and stigma associated with the disease. 8220;Leprosy is raging more in the mindset. We could not eradicate it so far because we have all been treating it like a four-letter word,8221; said ad guru Alyque Padamsee at the launch of the biggest-ever media campaign against leprosy launched on Wednesday.

The campaign, launched by BBC World Service Trust under the direction of the Ministry of Health and developed in partnership with Doordarshan and All India Radio, is a beef-up exercise to the government8217;s week-long leprosy elimination campaign, beginning on the Leprosy Day on January 30.

8220;Through this campaign, we are hoping to tackle the stigma surrounding leprosy as well as get people to report their symptoms. We want people to know that it can be cured with Multiple Drug Therapy MDT,8221; says Peter Gill, Executive Producer, BBC World Service Trust. Under the campaign, DD and AIR teams from India8217;s most leprosy-endemic states West Bengal, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh have created 26 advertising spots for regional and national transmission and 40 spots for radio. In a bid to reach a wider audience, the radio spots have been 8220;transcreated8221; into 15 local languages and dialects across the five target states.

Aimed at re-positioning leprosy as an ordinary, curable disease, the campaign is a journey from the world of fantasy to ground reality. The inherent message is simple MDT khao, kusht mitao. 8220;It8217;s not just information, it is communication. Emotional prejudices cannot be erased by just information. They need a message that motivates,8221; says Padamsee, who is the creative consultant to the project. The spot themes begin with mythology and move on to simple and straight testimonials.

From mythology, there8217;s Shambha, son of Krishna, praying at Konark to be cured of leprosy and there is also the home-grown Shaktimaan saving a child from both a rail accident and the trauma of being infected. In testimonials, Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly endorse the message and doing it for free!. There is a spoof with satirist Jaspal Bhatti acting as a quack and one reliving the Salim-Anarkali fable with a contemporary message.

Explaining the need for such a mammoth effort, N.S. Dharmshaktu, Deputy-Director General, Leprosy, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says: 8220;The task is more daunting in India where we have the dubious distinction of having more than 61 per cent of the world8217;s leprosy patients. The good news, however, is that we have 85 per cent of world8217;s cured patients.quot;