When the flight steward announced that the outside temperature in Bangalore is 24 C all of us especially those who from Delhi sighed a great relief at this sudden drop of 20 degree Celsius. Six of us meant for the state of Karnataka had boarded the same morning flight to proceed to different destinations but all of us had a common goal-Leprosy Elimination.

Eradication programme (NLEP) had been going on for years but finally experts all over the world agreed technically "eradication - that is total removal of the causative organism is not feasible" and so we should concentrate on eliminating it as a public health problem (that is bringing the prevalence rate below 1/10000) and thereby facilitating a natural death for Leprosy like it did in many European countries. So, for some years now Govt of India. WHO and ILEP agencies are into this and the good news is that we are successful in many areas. Yet there are many areas where things aren't that bright. Are we driving in the right direction? Are we utilizing the soft loan of World Bank to India for freeing itself from this stigma disease? Where can we improve? We are here to answer these. Teams are out in all the endemic States to gather information in a well-planned way: the LEM (Leprosy Elimination Monitoring) Exercises 2004

I was teamed with an ILEP member, a supervisor in the Damien Foundation (a Belgian Org against Leprosy and TB, recently) for the job-the hunting grounds Bangalore (Rural) and Hassan District. We took the taxi from the Airport to the SLO's office at Ananda Rao Circle. Then after interacting with him we were shifted to the hostel of SIHFW. It ironically shared the same campus with the Leprosy Hospital. The road wines into the campus and on both sides lie leprosy patients huddled in many corners-though most of them are old burnt out cases with deformities. It was really a ghastly sight. Although I am already 7 years in service I hadn't been this close encounter with them.

One can see them in their typical carts and their auto-amputed limbs. It sends shudders down my spine and an immense grief envelops me: Oh God! What have we been doing? It really involves all of us the docs, the paramedics and the common man for the problem of leprosy is multipronged. The die-hard stigma and the ghastly deformities have made the disease something about which no one even wants to talk. From 8-6 every day we are in the field trying to do our assigned job-gathering information and indicators for the programme. Everyday when we go out and come back we see this particular leprosy patient right in front of the Hostel gate : he has the saddle nose, leonine face and the amputed stumps. I often see him trying to hold a spoon with his stumps and trying to feed himself. My heart cries for him: for the one whose war is long lost. My friend forgive us, we couldn't be that quick, quick enough to save you from the abyss.

As usual the hunt is still going on……