OPINION

Leprosy mustn't be forgotten amid Covid crisis

Oped, Yohei Sasakawa, Published on 01/06/2021

» The 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) takes place from May 24 to June 1. This year's gathering is likely to be dominated by Covid-19, but here I want to talk about a different disease -- leprosy -- and a resolution that was adopted at the WHA exactly 30 years ago. This resolution called for the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem at the global level by the year 2000, with elimination defined as a prevalence rate of less than one case per 10,000 population. It was a landmark resolution for the time.